Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF POWER

Iron and Steel Industry (Orders)

Mr. Chetwynd: asked the Paymaster-General to what extent the decline in iron and steel production, particularly in the heavy section, is due to the reduction in orders from Government Departments and the nationalised industries.

The Paymaster-General (Mr. Reginald Maudling): I regret that, as complete information is not available, I can reply only as regards direct deliveries of steel. Total steel deliveries in the first nine months of this year were 968,000 tons lower than deliveries in the same period last year. A reduction in deliveries to the railways and coal mines accounted for 124,000 tons of this. The corresponding figures for heavy steel are 356,000 tons and 99,000 tons respectively.

Mr. Chetwynd: Is not the Minister aware that this increase and much of the short-time work in the heavy steel industry, especially on Tees-side, are due to

the falling off of orders from the nationalised industries? Can the right hon. Gentleman say what action he is now taking to increase orders so that we can get up to 100 per cent. in volume again?

Mr. Maudling: Certainly the orders from the railways and the coal mines have had a substantial effect. Both these industries are aware of that and of what they can do to help the steel industry. I think that the biggest single factor has been the fall in export demand.

Mr. P. Williams: Can the right hon. Gentleman say what deliveries to the shipbuilding industry have been made in the same period?

Mr. Maudling: I am afraid that I cannot; not without notice.

Sheet Steel Production, Wales

Mr. Marquand: asked the Paymaster-General what proportion of the sheet rolling mill capacity of steelworks in South West Wales, South East Wales, and North Wales, respectively, was rolling sheet steel during the last week for which figures are available.

Mr. Maudling: The respective figures for the month of October were 95 per cent., 91 per cent. and 100 per cent.

Members of Public Boards (Political Activities)

Mr. Palmer: asked the Paymaster-General what directions are given to guide members of public boards appointed by him, including the Iron and Steel Board, in the matter of participation in political controversy affecting


the future of the industry for which they are responsible.

Mr. Maudling: None, Sir. Members of these boards are only asked to refrain from political activities in so far as such activities might be held to affect their fitness to carry out their duties under the law as it stands.

Mr. Palmer: Would the right hon. Gentleman not agree that members of electricity boards and the National Coal Board have always shown great restraint in matters of political controversy despite tremendous provocation? Is it too much to ask that members of the Iron and Steel Board follow the precedent?

Mr. Maudling: I am not aware that they have been doing anything else.

Oral Answers to Questions — COAL

Retired Miners (Pensions)

Mr. A. Roberts: asked the Paymaster-General (1) when a decision can now be expected concerning pensions for retired mineworkers not covered by the National Coal Board pensions scheme;
(2) if he will make a statement on the question of retired miners who are not in receipt of the National Coal Board retired mineworkers' pension.

Mr. Maudling: The union proposed that pensions should be paid out of the mineworkers' pension scheme to miners who had retired before the inception of the scheme. My noble Friend has the greatest sympathy with the union's objective, but after the most careful consideration he has been unable to find any way in which this could be achieved without breach of pensions principles involving inevitable and costly repercussions. My noble Friend has accordingly, and with very real regret, had to confirm that he is unable to approve the union's proposal.

Mr. Roberts: Is the Paymaster-General aware that his reply will cause great dissatisfaction throughout the coalfields? Is he also aware that these men have made some contribution, and does he not agree that some ways could be found of paying a gratuity or a pension for services rendered in the same way as already the National Coal Board finds ways and

means of getting round the matter when appointing officials to higher office?

Mr. Maudling: I say once again that my noble Friend appreciates very much the motives underlying this matter, but after a most careful examination of all involved, he has been unable to approve the proposal put forward by the unions.

Mr. Neal: Is the Paymaster-General aware that, following the very favourable actuarial report on this fund, both participants in the scheme, the National Union of Mineworkers and the National Coal Board, were willing for these retired miners to be included? Why should not the Minister find some means of bringing in these men when both parties are agreed?

Mr. Maudling: There are a number of reasons. I do not accept that there are ample funds available in the scheme. I understand that the Board was willing to agree on the assumption that no extra cost fell upon it. I am not sure that that is so. Such calculations as I have available show that that condition is by no means certain of fulfilment.

Mr. Shinwell: Does not the right hon. Gentleman realise that this money does not belong to the Government? It is raised by the people employed in the industry. By what right do the Government interfere with the distribution of funds made available in the industry? What have the Government got to do with this?

Mr. Maudling: The Government have statutory responsibilities in this field, but I must point out that these moneys belong to certain trustees who hold them on behalf of the members of the existing fund. If these trustees were to pay the moneys out to other people then they might well be liable to legal action.

Mr. Roberts: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment at the earliest possible opportunity.

Oil Extraction

Mrs. Slater: asked the Paymaster-General what general directions have been given to the National Coal Board to carry out further research on the extraction of oil from coal; and what steps have been taken to comply with such directions.

Mr. Maudling: None, Sir. The British Coal Utilisation Research Association, in which the National Coal Board has a large interest, is playing an important part in the general scheme of research which is being carried out under the auspices of the Ministry of Power.

Mrs. Slater: In view of the increasing stocks of coal and the fact that if the stocks could be used in this way it might have a bearing on imports, does not the right hon. Gentleman think that he should do something more to step up research along these lines?

Mr. Maudling: I can assure the hon. Lady that my noble Friend and everyone concerned in the industry recognise what great advantages could be achieved from successful research in this matter, and efforts are being made by all concerned, the National Coal Board, the Department and trade associations.

Mining Subsidence

Mr. Proctor: asked the Paymaster-General if he will give a general direction to the National Coal Board to investigate and report on the likely effects of mining subsidence in the United Kingdom, with particular reference to the probable incidence of flooding.

Mr. Maudling: No, Sir. In view of its obligations under the Coalmining (Subsidence) Act, the National Coal Board is constantly studying these effects.

Mr. Proctor: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the grave concern about this matter, especially among local authorities in the Eccles division, where canals are grouted and the surrounding land is allowed to sink so that we are in danger in future of creating artificial lakes? Does he not think that consultation with the local authorities and the discussion on future plans to avoid these disasters would be better than attemping to mitigate them after subsidence has taken place? Does not he, and the National Coal Board realise how grave and costly the danger is likely to be?

Mr. Maudling: There is very close and continuous consultation on all these matters, but if the hon. Member has in mind any instance in particular in which he thinks that danger might arise and will let me know, I shall be glad to communicate it to the National Coal Board.

Imports

Mr. A. Roberts: asked the Paymaster-General if he will now give a general direction to the National Coal Board to cease making further contracts for the importation of coal.

Mr. Maudling: No, Sir. The National Coal Board, in accordance with present Government policy, has made no new contracts for imports since 1957.

Mr. Roberts: When is it expected that these contracts will terminate?

Mr. Maudling: I think the only deliveries still to be made under these contracts are certain tonnages of Belgian coal which are likely to spill over into the beginning of 1959.

National Coal Board (Members' Pensions)

Mr. Neal: asked the Paymaster-General how many members of the National Coal Board are excluded, under the terms of their appointment, from pension rights upon retirement.

Mr. Maudling: Apart from the part-time Board members, of whom there are three, none of the members of the National Coal Board is excluded from pension rights under the terms of his appointment.

Mr. Neal: I am indebted to the Paymaster-General for that very informative reply. Will he please note the contrast between the treatment of those top-level executives with very short terms of service and that of the miners who have spent a life-time in the industry?

Mr. Maudling: With respect, I do not think that that is an entirely fair point. The Government's policy, which, I understand, has been the policy for some time is to continue the pension arrangements to which a full-time member was entitled before appointment, or, if he was not otherwise entitled, subject to 10 year's qualifying service to give terms analogous to those of the Board's staff pensions scheme. I think that is perfectly reasonable.

Small Coal (Uses)

Mr. Palmer: asked the Paymaster-General if, in order to utilise to the maximum the abundant supplies of small coal


now available, he will issue general directions in the national interest to the Central Electricity Generating Board to abandon entirely the use of oil in power stations, to the Gas Council to concentrate all possible resources on developing processes for the hydrogenisation of small coal, and to the National Coal Board to discuss terms for the sale of coal to power stations such as will enable the electricity boards to offer in bulk off-peak supplies of energy for space heating at low and competitive prices.

Mr. Maudling: No, Sir. I am satisfied that the industries concerned are already doing everything practicable to develop the uses of small coal.

Mr. Palmer: Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that these are all sensible and practical suggestions which would go a long way to reduce the surplus stocks of small coal? If the Minister is not prepared to take positive action on lines of this kind, what really is the point of having a Minister of Power?

Mr. Maudling: The last question goes a little wide, but to go through the three points of the Question: as for the use of coal in power stations, as I said in a recent debate—and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Blyth (Mr. Robens) agreed with me—we must not ask the electricity industry to go to the extent of breaking contracts, but short of that it is reducing the use of oil as much as possible; the Gas Council is doing a great deal of work on the hydrogenation of small coal; the National Coal Board's terms of sale of coal to the power stations seems essentially a commercial matter in which the Coal Board should take the initiative.

By-products

Mr. Fitch: asked the Paymaster-General if he will give some general information about the scientific investigation which is being carried on into the uses of coal as a by-product.

Mr. Maudling: My noble Friend attaches great importance to the development of coal as a source of oil, chemicals and other by-products. Much work is being done in this field by the many organisations concerned. I would refer the hon. Member to the Annual Reports

of the National Coal Board and the Gas Council and the Fuel Research Report of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research for information about the work for which they are responsible.

Mr. Fitch: In view of the decline in the demand for coal due to competition from oil, and in view also of the likely further decline due to the competition of atomic power, does the right hon. Gentleman not think that this is a matter of urgency? We in this country have had a mineral upon which the country's economy has been based for generations. Surely we should make more use of this?

Mr. Maudling: I entirely accept everything the hon. Member says about the importance of research into the use of coal, and I can assure him that this is well understood by my noble Friend, the Department and industry.

Mr. Robens: Is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied at the speed with which the Coal Board is able to produce smokeless fuel from coal it is already producing? In view of the demands for smokeless fuels as a result of the operation of the Clean Air Act, does he not think that research into that, and possibly a little more money spent upon it, may be necessary at this stage?

Mr. Maudling: I should not like to give an answer off the cuff to the right hon. Gentleman. If he will put that question down I shall be glad to give him an answer.

National Coal Board (Borrowing Limits)

Mr. Fitch: asked the Paymaster-General what proposals Her Majesty's Government have for recommending that the Coal Board be allowed to increase its annual borrowing powers.

Mr. Maudling: An Order providing for an increase in the borrowing limit in the current financial year will shortly be laid before the House.

Mr. Fitch: The right hon. Gentleman, I am sure, is aware of the plight of the Coal Board, with 17 million or 18 million tons of undistributed coal in stock, so that obviously money is tied up. When this Order is brought before the House, shall we be able to debate the general situation in the coal industry?

Mr. Maudling: This Order is subject to an affirmative Resolution of the House. What we are allowed to debate is a matter for you, Mr. Speaker, and not for me.

Mr. Gower: While so many of these nationalised industries are facing great problems, is it not folly to add other industries to the nationalised industries?

Prices

Mr. Palmer: asked the Paymaster-General if he will now bring to an end the arrangement under which his Department still exercises control over coal prices and give to the National Coal Board full responsibility for price determinations.

Mr. Maudling: No, Sir. The purpose of the "Gentleman's Agreement" was approved by the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries, although they questioned its informality, and my noble Friend considers that purpose equally important today.

Mr. Palmer: Will the right hon. Gentleman not agree that the Select Committee oil Nationalised Industries recommended commercial freedom for the Coal Board subject to reserve direction by the Minister? In view of the increasingly competitive conditions which the Coal Board is facing, will not the Minister look at the matter once again?

Mr. Maudling: My noble Friend is always very willing to look at this or any other matter again on representations from hon. Members, but, as far as I can recall, what the Select Committee was concerned about was not so much the existence of the control as the method by which it was enforced. I may be wrong.

Mr. Robens: Does this gentlemen's agreement apply to the prices to be charged for coal or coke for export?

Mr. Maudling: I am afraid I do not know the answer to that offhand, but its general purpose, of course, is to control pithead prices of coal. My impression is that in export matters there is maximum freedom for the Coal Board. I will look into it to ensure that is so.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF SUPPLY

Transport Aircraft

Mr. de Freitas: asked the Minister of Supply how many and which transport aircraft are on order for the Royal Air Force.

The Minister of Supply (Mr. Aubrey Jones): Twenty Britannias.

Mr. de Freitas: Will the Minister ask the Secretary of State for Air why there is no replacement on order for the Valetta or Beverley? This continual delay is giving great pleasure to the American aircraft industry and causing great concern to the British.

Mr. Jones: The hon. Gentleman should address that question to my right hon. Friend. I only place orders on requirements determined by the Services.

Sir A. V. Harvey: Is my right hon. Friend aware that because of the delay in reaching decisions on these matters American aircraft are being used to transport British troops and their families to the Commonwealth?

Mr. Jones: That also, I think, is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Air.

Mr. Shinwell: Do not this and other Questions on the Paper to the right hon. Gentleman indicate that there is considerable ambiguity in this House and elsewhere as to the Government's intentions for the future of the aircraft industry, and could the right hon. Gentleman be a little more specific about the Government's intentions, if not today, in the foreseeable future?

Mr. Jones: There may be some ambiguity in the minds of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen, but there is no ambiguity as to the relative functions of the Service Ministers and myself. The Questions put to me are all concerned with the requirements of the Services. I do not determine the requirements of the Services. I place orders on the industry when the requirements have been formulated.

Mr. Shinwell: Is it not somewhat distressing to the right hon. Gentleman that his colleagues should not inform him in specific terms about their requirements, leaving him completely in the dark?

Mr. Jones: The right hon. Gentleman should be aware that certain requirements are being considered by the Secretary of State for Air, but no orders have so far been served on me.

Mr. de Freitas: Is it not the Minister's job to bring before the Government, and especially the Secretary of State for Air, the evidence he has about the disastrous effect on the British aircraft industry of the continued delay on the part of his Service colleagues?

Surface-to-Surface Missiles

Mr. de Freitas: asked the Minister of Supply what surface-to-surface missiles are being developed for the Royal Air Force; and which of them use solid fuel.

Mr. Aubrey Jones: No solid fuel surface-to-surface weapon is being developed for the Royal Air Force.

Mr. de Freitas: Does this mean that it is the intention to rely entirely on American solid fuel missiles?

Mr. Jones: No, Sir. Research is being undertaken, as I have told the hon. Member before, into propulsion by means of solid fuels, but as yet no ground-to-ground weapon incorporating solid fuel techniques has been decided upon.

Fairey Aviation Company (Valley Employees)

Mr. C. Hughes: asked the Minister of Supply if he will state the nature of the work carried on by the Fairey Aviation Company Limited as his agents at Royal Air Force, Valley, Anglesey; and how many civilians are employed on this work.

Mr. Aubrey Jones: The Fairey Aviation Company's work at Valley has been in support of the R.A.F.'s trials and training programme with the "Fireflash" guided missile. They employ 38 civilians, of whom 34 were locally recruited.

Mr. Hughes: Is the Minister in a position to say whether or not these civilians and also the civilians employed by the Air Ministry are shortly to be made redundant, making a total of 85 civilians? In view of the already grave employment situation in Anglesey, would the Minister be able to inform us that he will do everything to ensure that civilians will continue in employment?

Mr. Jones: Acceptance trials of the weapon are shortly to be terminated. My work in connection with the acceptance trials is, therefore, also to be terminated and the agency is to be dissolved. In those circumstances, I have no longer any requirement for this kind of work.

Supersonic Airliner

Sir A. V. Harvey: asked the Minister of Supply what progress is being made in finalising the specification of a supersonic airliner.

Mr. Aubrey Jones: As the House is aware, a research study is in progress. The final report, however, is not expected to be available for some time.

Sir A. V. Harvey: Is my right hon. Friend aware that his reply to my Question does not take us very much further? Is he also aware that this is a very important matter which may seem a long way off today but which will mean a great deal to Britain in years to come? Will he, therefore, try to give the House a little more information about what is being done?

Mr. Jones: I agree that this is a very important matter. On the other hand, I think it important, first of all, to determine what the most economic shape of a supersonic civil aircraft is likely to be. At this stage I would say that it is more important to have clarity of conception than to plunge into pell-mell execution.

Beverley and Canberra Aircraft (Replacements)

Mr. Mason: asked the Minister of Supply what representations he has made to the Service Ministers with a view to speeding up a co-ordinated decision on the Beverley and Canberra replacements.

Mr. Aubrey Jones: I am in close touch with my colleagues on both projects.

Mr. Mason: Whilst appreciating that we are wasting our time in questioning the Minister of Supply at all on these problems, may I ask whether the right hon. Gentleman is not aware that with the contraction of the aircraft industry many aircraft firms are put in an invidious predicament? Is he aware that they are interested in these replacements, are waiting for orders and are specially holding on to skilled labour? This kind of thing


cannot go on for ever. What does the Minister intend to do to alleviate the situation?

Mr. Jones: As I have told the hon. Member more than once, any questions on Service requirements should be directed to the Service Ministers.

Sir A. V. Harvey: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the specification issued by his own Department to the aircraft industry went out over eighteen months ago? What is the reason for this continued delay when the matter is desperate for so many people who are working in the factories?

Mr. Jones: If my hon. Friend will look at the record, he will find that "eighteen months" is an exaggeration, but again I do not determine the requirements.

Mr. Jay: Does the right hon. Gentleman, as Minister of Supply, not recognise his responsibility, as have all other Ministers of Supply, for the future of the British aircraft industry? In that connection, are not all these Questions relevant to his responsibility?

Mr. Jones: Yes, Sir. I recognise my responsibility for the aircraft industry, but I cannot place orders on the industry merely for the sake of maintaining the industry. I can only place orders on requirements determined by the Services.

Mr. Shinwell: Are not the Minister's answers an implied condemnation of the Government? Is not the right hon. Gentleman in some difficulty, and could we not help to extricate him from that difficulty by suggesting that some day, when the Secretary of State for Air is sitting where the right hon. Gentleman is now sitting, the right hon. Gentleman should come over to us and interrogate him?

Mr. Jones: The right hon. Gentleman could certainly help me out of my difficulty by not addressing to me questions which are not properly for me.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF HEALTH

Drugs

Mrs. Slater: asked the Minister of Health (1) if his attention has been drawn to the article "Addiction to Unrestricted Drugs", a copy of which

has been sent to him, in the British Medical Journal, 18th October; and what action he proposes to take on the problems raised;
(2) if any further consideration has been given to the restricting of carbromal drugs.

The Minister of Health (Mr. Derek Walker-Smith): My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and I have invited the Interdepartmental Committee on Drug Addiction to consider and advise us upon the problem of preparations, including carbromal preparations, which are outside the scope of the Dangerous Drugs Act but which may be liable to produce addiction or to be habit-forming. The Committee has not yet concluded its consideration of this question.

Mrs. Slater: Whilst thanking the Minister for the action which has already been taken, may I ask whether he is not aware that this is a responsible article which gives case histories of people who have been affected by these drugs? Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman speed consideration by the Committee which is studying these drugs and also speed some action to place them on the poisons list so that we can protect people from the present large sale of these drugs?

Mr. Walker-Smith: Certainly this is a responsible article, but it does not add to the information which is already before the Committee: and that Committee is proceeding as rapidly as its wide duties will permit. Making a drug a poison is a matter for consideration by the Poisons Board which makes its recommendations to the Home Secretary.

Dr. Summerskill: Whilst welcoming the Minister's statement, may I ask whether he would not consider enlarging the Committee's terms of reference with a view to improving the machinery devised to examine the various products which are coming on the market now? Surely the machinery is not adequate to cope with the increasing number of products now being put out by the proprietary houses?

Mr. Walker-Smith: The right hon. Lady will appreciate that the terms of reference are already wide, in that they require the Committee to consider whether any advice that it gives on narcotic drugs


should extend to other drugs which are liable to produce addiction or be habit-forming. The two drugs, carbromal and bromvaletone, were specifically referred to the Committee, but, of course, the Committee's consideration is not limited to them.

Mr. Hastings: In considering this matter, will the right hon. and learned Gentleman carefully keep in mind the possible danger to patients of unnecessarily restricting the freedom of action of medical practitioners?

Mr. Walker-Smith: That is another consideration. As the hon. Member knows, guidance is given, I think acceptably, to the medical profession in these matters.

Mentally Handicapped Children, Sunderland

Mr. P. Williams: asked the Minister of Health whether he is satisfied with the provision of places at suitable centres for the training of mentally-handicapped children in Sunderland.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Mr. Richard Thompson): No, Sir, but I understand that the local health authority proposes to provide a new centre in the near future.

Mr. Williams: Can my hon. Friend state the number of places per thousand of the population and how this compares with the rest of the country?

Mr. Thompson: Not without notice.

Deaf Persons (Training and Welfare)

Mr. Dugdale: asked the Minister of Health if he will direct local authorities to provide vocational training and welfare services for the deaf, seeing that he has already directed them to provide such services for the blind.

Mr. Walker-Smith: I have recently asked the relatively few local authorities without welfare schemes for the deaf to give fresh consideration to their adoption and I hope they will do so without any direction. Vocational training is available to disabled persons—including deaf persons—under the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act, 1944.

Mr. Dugdale: While I welcome that Answer in so far as the Minister has

taken action to help the deaf, will the right hon. and learned Gentleman say why it is necessary to direct local authorities in the case of the blind and not in the case of the deaf?

Mr. Walker-Smith: The direction in the case of the blind was only, in effect, a direction for continuance, because welfare services for the blind were already being provided by all authorities at the appointed day in 1948.

Mr. Hastings: How many local authorities have already provided schemes for training the deaf?

Mr. Walker-Smith: One hundred and sixteen out of the total of 146 authorities have adopted welfare schemes for the deaf and further schemes for submission are under consideration.

Mr. Hastings: Are they training schemes?

Mr. Walker-Smith: No; these are the welfare schemes. The training is a matter for the Ministry of Labour, although, of course, there is co-ordination in respect of these two activities.

Radioactivity

Mrs. Butler: asked the Minister of Health whether he will consult the Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs about the desirability of setting up a joint board of the food and drugs authorities in Greater London with responsibility and power to ensure full coverage by regular monitoring for radioactive content of all foods entering the Greater London area, and of all atmosphere and water affecting people in the Greater London area.

Mr. Walker-Smith: My right hon. Friend and I cannot see any special advantage in having a joint board for this purpose.

Mrs. Butler: Does the Minister not regard it as urgent that existing monitoring arrangements should be supplemented and extended in some way and that a vast central population like that of London should be represented, so that all available figures for the London area can be interpreted and published?

Mr. Walker-Smith: I have no reason to think that there is a greater element of risk to foodstuffs entering the Greater


London area than elsewhere in the country. I do not think that a joint board could, as a matter of machinery, add to the efficacy with which this matter is being treated.

Mr. Lipton: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman bear in mind that this is not a purely academic question so far as London is concerned? Does he recall that immediately after the Windscale accident, there was a quite high increase in radioactivity in the London area as a result? Some better co-ordination ought to be devised.

Mr. Walker-Smith: I rather doubt whether the institution of a joint board would have materially affected this matter.

Dr. Summerskill: Can the Minister tell the House what kind of machine has been devised? When the Prime Minister answers these questions, he always forgets that the danger is cumulative, which means that every little degree of radioactivity matters to the individual. The time has come when the House should be told how the Departments are organising themselves so that there shall be detection of infection.

Mr. Walker-Smith: The right hon. Lady does my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister considerably less than justice. The House will recall that his statement of 31st October last year gave a detailed account of the monitoring machinery in practice and the oversight of the monitoring under Lord Rothschild's Committee and its special sub-committee that was set up under Dr. Loutit, Director of the Medical Research Council Radio-biological Research Unit. It is all in HANSARD.

Dr. Summerskill: If the Minister looks at that statement, he will see that whenever the Prime Minister answers Questions on this subject, he entirely ignores the latest report of the United Nations.

Mr. Walker-Smith: I do not think so. My right hon. Friend's Answer was a long one and fully merits re-reading and reconsideration by the right hon. Lady.

Mrs. Butler: asked the Minister of Health the present arrangements for the monitoring for radioactivity of fish before it is available for sale to the public.

Mr. Walker-Smith: My right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has arrangements for monitoring the effluent from atomic energy establishments where it might affect fish in the neighbourhood. I have no reason to think that fish landed in this country carry an appreciable risk of contamination as they come from grounds far distant from any area used for nuclear test explosions.

Mrs. Butler: Does the Minister realise that the discharge of radioactive waste into the sea has caused considerable public disquiet? Is it not important that there should be regular monitoring of fish to make quite sure that the public are protected from any contamination which may have occurred in any part of the world, as the currents of the sea are constantly moving?

Mr. Walker-Smith: The Prime Minister has described the general monitoring arrangements. If what the hon. Lady has in mind is the monitoring of effluents that might affect the fish, or the monitoring of the fishing grounds, that would be a question for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

Mr. P. Williams: Can my right hon. and learned Friend give an assurance that there will be a ban on red herrings during the period of the next election?

Mrs. Butler: asked the Minister of Health what are the present arrangements for the monitoring for radioactivity of food imported into this country.

Mr. Walker-Smith: With the exception of imported flour, which was included in the monitoring programme undertaken by the Agricultural Research Council referred to by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 31st October, 1957, no special tests are made of imported food. I have no reason to think that there is any appreciable risk from this source.

Mrs. Butler: Would the Minister look at this again? Does he not think it important to make sure that the public is adequately protected, in view of the variations in radioactive fall-out affecting food differently in different parts of the world from which we have imports?

Mr. Walker-Smith: Naturally that is a matter to which we all give careful


consideration, but if the hon. Lady will refresh her memory of what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said on 31st October, she will see that there is this detailed procedure in operation at the present time.

Dentists, Sunderland

Mr. Willey: asked the Minister of Health what steps he is taking in view of the fact that the Annual Report of his Chief Medical Officer reveals that in Sunderland there is only one dental practitioner to 9,210 persons.

Mr. Walker-Smith: The shortage of dentists is a general problem which affects the country as a whole. I told the House on 24th July last that the Government had accepted the recommendation in the Report of the McNair Committee regarding the need to expand the facilities for training dental students. Steps are being taken to stimulate recruitment as recommended by that committee.

Mr. Willey: Whilst appreciating the general problem, does not the Minister recognise that this revelation is a shock to some of us in Sunderland and that we are very badly off in this respect? Can nothing be done to ensure that dentists are better distributed?

Mr. Walker-Smith: I have, of course, no power to direct dentists to particular areas, nor would I wish to have. There is a general problem, and Sunderland will be helped as we expand the dental training facilities in the way I have described.

Doctors (Emigration)

Dr. D. Johnson: asked the Minister of Health if he is aware of the increasing numbers of established doctors who are leaving general practice under the National Health Service to emigrate overseas; and whether he will make appropriate inquiries into this trend.

Mr. Walker-Smith: I have no reliable evidence of any increase in the emigration of general practitioners but will gladly study any which my hon. Friend can produce. Information on the emigration of doctors and dentists generally submitted by the Government to the Royal Commission is published in the Commission's Minutes of Evidence 14–15 for 17th–18th April, 1958.

Dr. Johnson: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that there was a feature last week in the British Medical Journal which shows this trend and, if I send it to him, will he kindly give it his consideration?

Mr. Walker-Smith: I shall always be glad to study any evidence which my hon. Friend produces.

Mr. Tilney: Would my right hon. and learned Friend agree that if this migration is to parts of the Commonwealth which are short of doctors, such emigration, whether permanent or on a temporary secondment basis, should be encouraged by his Department?

Mr. Walker-Smith: Yes, of course, Sir. My specific statutory responsibility is to provide a National Health Service in this country, but I am not unmindful of the considerations to which my hon. Friend has properly referred.

Doctors (Pay)

Mrs. Jeger: asked the Minister of Health if he will now make a statement on doctors' pay.

Mr. Walker-Smith: I would refer the hon. Member to my reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Sir H. Linstead) on 20th November.

Mrs. Jeger: Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that his reply has given the country the impression that these rather stingy ad hoc hand-outs to the medical and dental profession indicate a complete lack of Government policy towards the National Health Service? Can he say whether in these days of expanding economy this concession should be taken as an encouragement by all the other ancillary workers who have claims before him, such as the radiographers, the psychiatric social workers, the laboratory technicians, the orthoptists, the chiropodists—the list is too long for me to give all the people in the National Health Service who are entitled to better treatment from the right hon. and learned Gentleman?

Mr. Walker-Smith: If the country did form any such impression as the hon. Lady first referred to, it would be an erroneous impression through a wrong understanding of the facts. This is neither stingy, nor piecemeal; it is a 4 per cent. increase costing £5 million, and


is given because the Royal Commission is taking longer to report than had originally been thought probable.

Imported Apples (Contamination)

Mr. Champion: asked the Minister of Health if he is aware of the fact that Derbyshire's Chief Health Inspector has reported that health inspectors in that county in 1957 condemned more than one and a half tons of imported apples as heavily contaminated with lead and arsenic, and that all stocks were not traced; and if he will tighten the import inspection arrangements to prevent contaminated fruit leaving the ports.

Mr. R. Thompson: I am aware of this report. Representations were made in 1957 to the country from which the apples came and the authorities there arranged for subsequent consignments to be washed or cleaned before export. It is not always practicable to detain a large consignment at the port pending the results of analysis. In such cases Port Health authorities get in touch with the local authorities concerned as soon as possible.

Mr. Champion: May I ask the Minister why it is not possible to hold fruit at the ports while the analysis is being made? It seems to me to be absolute madness to allow large quantities of these apples to be spread about the country, as they obviously are at the present time.

Mr. Thompson: This analysis can only be made effectively on a sampling basis. Since the goods are perishable, it is not feasible to detain the whole consignment.

Imported Egg Products

Mr. Blenkinsop: asked the Minister of Health what action he has taken to protect the public against the dangers of food poisoning and paratyphoid fever caused by contaminated imported egg products.

Mr. R. Thompson: Public health and certain other local authorities have been asked to pay special attention to the sampling of imported egg products for bacteriological examination. They try wherever possible to sample every batch, and measures are taken to prevent any batch found infected from giving rise to a public health risk. Representations

have been made to the authorities of several exporting countries that products should be bacteriologically examined before export.

Mr. Blenkinsop: In view of this situation, which has been going on for some years now, in which there have been continuous reports of serious infection in this way, has the Minister had any conversation with the President of the Board of Trade about checking further imports?

Mr. Thompson: My right hon. and learned Friend will have heard what the hon. Gentleman said, but I have witnessed the machinery which is in operation for checking the imports at one of our principal ports, and can say that I am satisfied that it works very well.

Children's Teeth

Mr. Blenkinsop: asked the Minister of Health whether he is aware of the worsening condition of children's teeth as shown by studies published by his Department; and what action he has taken to improve the preventive aspect of the dental services.

Mr. Walker-Smith: I am aware of the position. I am encouraging dentists to give more time to the conservation of children's teeth, and they are doing so. I am also taking steps to increase dental health education, which is now being coordinated by the Independent Standing Committee recommended by the McNair Report. Studies of the fluoridation of water supplies as a preventive measure are also proceeding in three areas of Great Britain.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Does not the right hon. and learned Gentleman feel that we have got beyond the stage of further studies about the addition of fluorides? Is it not about time that we took more definite action about it in view of the very disturbing reports from his Ministry's records of the steadily worsening condition of children's teeth?

Mr. Walker-Smith: No, Sir. The fluoridation demonstrations have been initiated and they are expected to produce some very useful information, hut the hon. Gentleman and the House will appreciate that that is only one of the various ways in which we are seeking to attack the problem.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman not agree that this matter has been discussed since 1950 or 1951, and surely we do not need further examination of the fluoride position with all the experience that there is in many parts of the world to tell us how valuable it can be?

Mr. Walker-Smith: We think we do or we should not have initiated the studies.

Poliomyelitis (Vaccination)

Mr. Scholefield Allen: asked the Minister of Health how many children up to 15 years of age, to the latest available date, have been registered for inoculation against poliomyelitis; how many of such children have been inoculated once and twice, respectively; what percentage of the child population up to 15 years of age has not been registered for inoculation; and what is the number of such children.

Mr. Walker-Smith: Up to the end of October 7,185,117 children up to 15 years of age in Great Britain had been registered, of whom 6,320,717 had received two doses of vaccine and 303,149 their first injection. Forty-one per cent., or just over 5 million, had still not been registered out of just over 12¼ million eligible children.

Mr. Scholefield Allen: Is the Minister satisfied that all possible steps have been taken to persuade parents to register their children, to satisfy them about the extremely slight risks of inoculation, risks comparable to risks with other inoculations, and to give the widest publicity to the need for inoculation against this scourge?

Mr. Walker-Smith: Yes, Sir; I am doing what I can to raise the acceptance rate and am helping local health authorities with their publicity. I fully agree with the hon. and learned Gentleman about the necessity for parents who have not already done so to register their children as soon as possible.

Dr. Summerskill: Can the Minister tell the House whether there is still any resistance to the American vaccine?

Mr. Walker-Smith: There are still a few people who have registered for British vaccine without the alternative of accepting American vaccine, but it is a relatively small number.

Mr. Chetwynd: Is the vaccine supply position now adequate to meet the hoped for increased demand?

Mr. Walker-Smith: Yes, Sir; there are ample supplies of vaccine for further registrations.

Social Workers (Report)

Mr. K. Robinson: asked the Minister of Health when he expects to receive the Report of the Working Party on the Functions and Training of Social Workers; and when the Report will be published.

Mr. Walker-Smith: I understand that the Report is expected to be presented early next year; immediate consideration will then be given to its publication.

Mr. Robinson: Is the Minister aware that many desirable development and training schemes in this field are awaiting the publication of the Report, which is being used by his Department as an excuse for doing nothing? Will he ensure that there is no delay whatever over publication after he receives the Report?

Mr. Walker-Smith: I did not quite hear what the hon. Gentleman said about my Department, but I rather gathered from the expression on his face that it was not complimentary, and so I do not think I missed very much. I will certainly take into account what he says about the importance of publication.

Dr. Johnson: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that this is, I think, the third working party on this subject and related subjects in succession to each other, and will he give the House an assurance that he will take action on the Report of this one and not appoint yet another working party to consider the recommendations of this working party?

Mr. Walker-Smith: I am sure that we shall get a very valuable report from the working party, and I shall consider it with a view to both action and publication.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOSPITALS

Nurses (Salaries and Working Hours)

Mr. Royle: asked the Minister of Health if he will take steps to pay State registered nurses their full salaries whilst they are engaged in training as midwives.

Mr. Walker-Smith: No, Sir. This is a matter, in the first place, for the Nurses and Midwives Whitley Council.

Mr. Royle: Is there not a real anomaly here? Is not the position that State registered nurses who are taking training in the tuberculosis, ophthalmic and orthopaedic service and in relation to neurosurgery and plastic surgery are actually paid the full salaries of staff nurses during that training? What is the difference? Is the Minister aware that if he took steps to inquire from nurses engaged in this training they would very quickly tell him the reason.

Mr. Walker-Smith: If it is an anomaly, it is pretty well rooted in the past, because this differentiation was established in 1943 and was confirmed by the Whitley Council in 1949 in its reorganisation of the salary structure. However, this matter is to be discussed by both sides of the Whitley Council tomorrow, and we will see what comes out of that.

Dr. Summerskill: Will the Minister consider this point? In various parts of the country there is a great shortage of midwives. Paradoxically enough, these midwives, whom we particularly want, very often find it difficult to undertake the necessary training because they are not treated in the same way as other nurses. This is an anomaly that bears hardly upon mothers. I hope, therefore, that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will use his good offices tomorrow.

Mr. Walker-Smith: It would, of course, appear that that is so. However anomalous the position may or may not be about their remuneration, the numbers coming forward for training are sufficient to meet the full needs of the midwifery profession. The crucial problem is that they do not go on in sufficient numbers to practise midwifery when they are trained. That is a rather different question.

Mr. K. Robinson: asked the Minister of Health what representations he has received, in connection with the shorter working week for nurses, about the requirement that the first four hours of overtime each week for mental nurses shall be unpaid.

Mr. Walker-Smith: I have received representations that the rule providing for additional payment to mental nurses for

excess hours worked should be amended. This is a separate question from the efforts now being made, in accordance with the Whitley Council's recommendation which I accepted, to secure a reduction in working hours in all hospitals by reorganisation of the nursing services.

Mr. Robinson: Is the Minister aware that, in effect, this rule means that the mental nurses notice no difference whatever from the introduction of a shorter working week? Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman at least give an assurance that he will not instruct his representatives on the Nurses and Midwives Whitley Council to oppose any rectification of the situation when the matter arises?

Mr. Walker-Smith: The last part of that question is hypothetical. It is a little early yet to say what will be the effect of the recommendation of May last until I have received the reports of how the arrangement is working out in the actual experience of hospital management committees.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Is the Minister aware of the serious position in which we find ourselves concerning the recruitment of mental nurses? Will he try to secure, at least, that there is no feeling of frustration amongst those coming in and those who train in mental nursing?

Mr. Walker-Smith: Yes, I am aware of the importance of the problems of recruitment. I am certainly anxious to do all that is possible not to have any feelings of frustration amongst these people who are doing this important work.

Park Hospital, Davyhume (Midwifery Beds)

Mr. Storey: asked the Minister of Health if he has considered the representations made to him through the Manchester Regional Hospital Board by the West Manchester Hospital Management Committee about the closure of midwifery beds at Park Hospital, Davyhume; and if he will make a statement thereon.

Mr. Walker-Smith: Yes, Sir. The representations are almost entirely concerned with the level of training allowances payable to pupil midwives. I understand that the Nurses and Midwives Whitley Council is about to consider this matter.

Mr. Storey: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that no less than 39 beds have had to be closed in this hospital because of the lack of trained midwives, and that this is entirely due to the lack of incentive both to pupil midwives and to midwives when they have received their training? During training they get £93 a year less than a staff nurse, and when they finish they get only £17 a year more. How does my right hon. and learned Friend expect to get enough midwives to keep these beds open if they are not properly paid?

Mr. Walker-Smith: My answers to the last Question are relevant to that, and particularly my answer to the right hon. Lady the Member for Warrington (Dr. Summerskill). As my hon. Friend knows, I am studying the advice of the National Consultative Council on the broader question to which he refers.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Is the Minister also aware that other beds are having to be closed down in other parts of the country, including North Shields and elsewhere, for the same reason? Will he keep this in mind?

Mr. Walker-Smith: Yes. I am fully aware that this problem is not confined to any particular locality.

St. James's Hospital, King's Lynn

Mr. Dye: asked the Minister of Health how many beds are at present available for chronic sick patients in St. James's Hospital, King's Lynn; and how this compares with the number provided when the hospital was taken over from the Norfolk County Council.

Mr. R. Thompson: There are now 109 beds, of which 17 are temporarily not available due to repairs and redecoration, compared with 102 in 1948.

Mr. Dye: Would the hon. Gentleman say whether there are sufficient to meet the requirements, or has he under consideration the question of extending the facilities for accommodation for the chronic sick in that area of West Norfolk?

Mr. Thompson: Yes, Sir, the regional hospital board had a proposal for a substantial measure of rebuilding at St. James's Hospital, but on reconsideration it proved prohibitively expensive and was dropped. The board is now planning a

new unit adjoining the West Norfolk and King's Lynn General Hospital to replace St. James's

Chronic Sick, Norfolk

Mr. Dye: asked the Minister of Health how many beds are provided in Norfolk by the hospital board for chronic sick patients; what is the percentage regularly occupied; what is the cost, per patient, per week; how many are provided by the county council under joint-user arrangement; and what is the average cost, per patient, per week.

Mr. R. Thompson: One thousand and thirty-six beds are provided and 87·4 per cent. were occupied on average in 1957. Of these beds 420 are in chronic sick hospitals, where the weekly costs range from £7 10s. 10d. to £11 8s. 10d., and 70 are provided under joint user arrangements with the Norfolk County Council at an average weekly cost of £5 12s. 7d. The remainder are in general hospitals where separate costs for chronic sick patients are not available.

Mr. Dye: In view of the comparatively lower cost for those in the joint user establishments, and in view of the advantages there are in such establishments, in that the old people do not have to be transferred from one to the other, is it the policy of the Ministry to continue that system or to extend it or to separate them entirely as between county council and hospital board?

Mr. Thompson: The general position is that the regional hospital board acquires responsibility for these patients only when they become too ill for the county council to look after.

Costs

Dr. D. Johnson: asked the Minister of Health if he is aware of the wide disparity of in-patient hospital costs revealed by his Department's recently published hospital costing returns, varying in the case of acute hospitals from £16 Os. 1d. per patient per week for the Middlesbrough General Hospital to £36 9s. 1d. per patient per week for the Royal Northern Hospital with all gradations of cost in between showing wide differences even for apparently similar hospitals; and what steps he proposes to take to find the reason for, and eliminate if possible, such disparities.

Mr. Walker-Smith: I am aware of the wide disparity of costs revealed by the returns. Some variations are inevitable even in hospitals classified in the same broad category, because of differences in local conditions and in the services provided. It is, however, one of the objects of the new costing arrangements to provide a firmer basis of comparison of detailed hospital costs and I have asked hospital authorities to make full use of the published information with a view to improving efficiency and securing economies.

Dr. Johnson: Whilst appreciating what my right hon. and learned Friend is doing in this respect, may I ask him, in view of some of the striking figures I have quoted, if he will not have the widest consultations in this matter concerning hospital costs, including perhaps owners of competent and entirely reputable nursing homes, who apparently are able to run their establishments more cheaply in many instances than do the management committees of these hospitals?

Mr. Walker-Smith: I have already asked regional hospital hoards to report by 1st June, 1959, showing the action taken on the costing returns and, where possible, giving estimates of savings which have resulted.

Oral Answers to Questions — GENEVA CONFERENCE (NUCLEAR TESTS)

Mrs. Castle: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs which proposals in the Soviet draft treaty submitted to the Geneva conference on the discontinuance of nuclear tests are unacceptable to Her Majesty's Government.

The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd): It was agreed that the negotiations on nuclear tests at Geneva should be conducted in private. The Soviet Government, however, published their proposed draft treaty, and it is not possible to abstain from public comment. Among the unacceptable features is the failure to define the machinery required to set up the control system recommended by the previous Geneva Conference of Experts. Nor does the draft treaty deal with any of the practical and political aspects of the control organisation.

Mrs. Castle: Is not the Foreign Secretary aware that the Prime Minister gave

a most misleading impression in his reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Beswick) on 11th November, when he suggested that the Soviet proposals did not contain proposals for control? Will not the Foreign Secretary agree that the draft treaty makes it quite clear that the Soviet Union visualises a control machinery being set up on the lines agreed by the Geneva Conference of Experts at the same time as an agreement to end tests comes into operation? In view of this, what is the British Government's objection to accepting the treaty and then dotting the i's and crossing the t's of the control proposals?

Mr. Lloyd: I do not accept what the hon. Lady says about my right hon. Friend, but I will tell the hon. Lady that we have no intention of entering into an agreement until the control system is defined with some precision. I will tell her the kind of matters which we want defined with precision: the structure of the control organisation; the international machinery that is required for the accession of other States; the rules for action by the control organisation; the enforcement of decisions; the recruitment and allocation of control system personnel; the facilities for the control system organisation and personnel; and communications and transport matters. These are the matters which to our minds must be included in the treaty before we shall know whether control is to be a reality.

Mr. Bevan: Do not the two answers that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has now given prove the entirely unsatisfactory nature of the present situation in which we get only snippets of information, some from the right hon. and learned Gentleman, some from the Prime Minister and some from the newspapers? Have not these proceedings, therefore, gone far enough to enable us to he told in a White Paper what all the proposals are? There would be no objection afterwards to those proposals being considered in private session, but surely we ought now to be told fully what all the proposals are so that public opinion can be informed about them and not be misled in this halfhearted way?

Mr. Lloyd: Of course, the right hon. Gentleman knows that he is on a point of some difficulty. Either one starts by saying that negotiations shall be in public,


in which case there is a series of propaganda speeches, or else one attempts to have a private negotiation. We have tried to have a private negotiation. The conference of experts was a private one, and it reached success largely, to my mind, for that reason. Unfortunately, there have been certain leakages or certain background guidance has been given. I will certainly consider the right hon. Gentleman's suggestion that the time may have come when we should give limited publicity to what has been taking place.

Oral Answers to Questions — COUNCIL OF EUROPE RECOMMENDATIONS

Mr. Royle: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if his attention has been drawn to Recommendation 121, 1957, on the resettlement of refugees or surplus agricultural workers, passed by the Council of Europe; and if he is prepared to adopt the text.

Mr. Selwyn Lloyd: As my right hon. Friend told the House on 29th January, 1958, the Council of Europe referred Recommendation 121 to the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation for an opinion.
The matter is still under consideration in the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation. An interim report from this Organisation was circulated on 4th August last to the Com-

mittee of Ministers' Deputies of the Council of Europe, who decided to transmit it to the Assembly.

Mr. Royle: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if his attention has been drawn to Recommendation 122, 1957, of the Council of Europe, on the increased use of fertilisers; and if he is prepared to adopt the text.

Mr. Selwyn Lloyd: This Recommendation was referred to the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation for an opinion in March, 1957; an interim report has recently been sent to the Committee of Deputies and will be communicated to the Assembly shortly. The Assembly will no doubt wish to discuss this report. Meanwhile I am not in a position to say what the attitude of the Committee of Ministers will be.

QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS

Mr. Brockway: On a point of order. In view of the critical situation in Tunisia and the fact that the Foreign Secretary passed over Question No. 55, because of the absence of the hon. Member who was to ask it, and since I have a Question associated with the subject, would it be possible for the Foreign Secretary to make a statement?

Mr. Speaker: That would not be order.

Orders of the Day — NAVY, ARMY AND AIR FORCE RESERVES BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

3.32 p.m.

The Secretary of State for War (Mr. Christopher Soames): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The Bill deals with the Services' last line of reserves, the men who, in the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) when he was Prime Minister, "will only be called out in a state of the gravest war emergency".
It may be helpful if, very shortly, I outline the story of these reserves since: he end of the last war. On demobilisation, the great majority of men who had been in the Services during the war were placed in an inactive Reserve—in the case of the Army, which had by far the largest numbers, this was known as Z Reserve. Men who had been demobilised and those who had served in the forces immediately after the war, on completion of the active part of their service, were transferred to that Reserve.
Hon. Members will recall that at the time of the Korean War, when there appeared to be a serious danger of a third world war, many of the Z reservists were recalled in 1951 for a fortnight's training—under legislation, specially passed for the purpose, which is now spent—so that they might be fitted into units which they would be required to join in the event of mobilisation. Apart from that, no other Service requirement has been placed on them.
In 1953, with the end of the war already eight years away, it was clear that it would not be right for the Government any longer to rely on emergency legislation passed at the outbreak of war as a means of retaining reservists, many of whom had, in any case, reached an age at which it would not be reasonable to expect them to keep a Reserve obligation.
The Navy, Army and Air Force Reserves Act, 1954, laid down that any men who had served in the forces since the outbreak of war, including those who had completed their service under the

National Service Acts, should be members of the Reserve until they reached the age of 45, or until the 30th June, 1959, whichever was the sooner. The only peacetime obligation placed on such a reservist was to notify his name, address and occupation as required by the appropriate authority, according to whichever Service it was. Again, the undertaking was given at the time that they would be called out only in case of the gravest emergency.
When the 1954 Act was passed, our mobilisation plans still envisaged the mobilisation of very large forces on the outbreak of a third world war. At present, there are about 3½ million men who are members of the Reserves of the three Services, those Reserves created by the 1954 Act. In the intervening five years, the conception of events likely to take place in the opening stages of another major war has been fundamentally changed by the vast increase of destructive power provided by thermonuclear weapons and the improved methods of their delivery.
If the opening phase of a world war was a nuclear exchange, we would have neither opportunity nor need for mass mobilisation on such a scale, but there would still be a requirement for several hundred thousand men to be available in this country to help to cope with the situation. It is our duty to make preparations to deal with such a situation, should it arise, and with whatever task those men might be called upon to face, whether the restoration of some semblance of order from chaos, or steps to repel an invasion. There can be no doubt that the presence of a disciplined body of men would be essential at such a time.
The Territorial Army is gradually building up its volunteer strength, but it does not yet have anything like the numbers needed to cope with such a situation. It is for that reason that we have decided to prolong the provisions of the 1954 Act, but only in respect of those men who joined the Services after the beginning of 1949. We do not need the large number who came before, people who were members of the Regular Reserve or auxiliary forces, whether as volunteers, war-time Service men or National Service men. Those who joined before 1st January, 1949, will be relieved of all


compulsory reserve obligation on 30th June next.
Those who joined the Services after 1st January, 1949, whether as National Service men or as Regulars who would have had to do their National Service if they had not joined as volunteers, will remain members of the appropriate sections of their Reserve until 30th June, 1964. In terms of numbers, this means that on 1st July next, instead of 3½ million men now covered by the 1954 Act, there will be about 650,000 affected by the Bill. In five years, when the Bill is spent, that number will have risen considerably as more National Service men complete their service. About two-thirds of the total will have served with the Army and about one-third with the Royal Air Force. The Royal Navy figure is very small, 17,000 now, rising to 42,000 by 1964.
The Bill will mean that with the exception of men who entered on National Service later than the normal age because of having been deferred for apprenticeship or professional training, the oldest men in the Reserve, in 1964, will be about 34 years old—that is, a man who was called up at the beginning of 1949 at the age of 18.
Parallel action will be taken by the Service Departments under Royal Warrant to release corresponding categories of officers. I am sure that hon. Members will share our satisfaction that it has been possible to remove this obligation, however tenuous and unlikely to be imposed it may have been, from the shoulders of so many people who bore the heat of the day thirteen or more years ago.
Hon. Members may ask what will be the situation in 1964, since the Bill makes provision for only five years ahead. By then, of course, it is expected that the last National Service man will have finished his whole-time service and the automatic flow of people into the Reserves will be ending. This is a question which will undoubtedly have to be faced by the Government of the day when the time comes, but it would he unreasonable to plan for more than five years ahead, especially in view of the vast changes which new weapons are imposing on our defence strategy, almost month by month, let alone year by year.
I have tried to explain to the House the basis of our requirements which is very different from what it was when the 1954 Bill was enacted.

Mr. E. Shinwell: I am very much interested in what the right hon. Gentleman has been saying. Is it the intention to call up, in the event of an emergency, what may be described as a global Reserve, or to call up men belonging to special categories, for example, the technical units? This is a very important point.

Mr. Soames: I take the right hon. Gentleman's point. That depends on what is needed at the time. We are here concerned with the two classes of Reserves affected—Group N and Group P of the General Reserve. Group N is being kept on and consists of specialists, as well as some soldiers and non-specialists, and Group P, which is not being maintained, also consists of a cross-section of the Army, both specialists and otherwise. It consists of men who have served before 1949.

Mr. Shinwell: Will this affect the Supplementary Reserve, which consists to a very large extent of technical units?

Mr. Soames: That is not affected in any way.
Meanwhile, there is a need in the years immediately ahead for these reserves to be available in the event of a very dire emergency, but I do not think that anyone will be prepared to go further than five years ahead at present. I hope that, with the Explanatory Memorandum, and the explanation which I have given to the House, the purpose of the Bill is now clear.
Clause 1 of the Bill extends for five years the application of the 1954 Act to those men who joined the forces after the beginning of 1949. Clause 2 repeals, with effect from the end of June, 1959, the provisions of the 1954 Act in as much as they affect the men who will then be released from the reserves. The Schedule to the Bill also contains certain consequential Amendments which have been made in other Service enactments as a result of the 1954 Act, which, since they relate to men to be released from the Reserves, can also be repealed. With that explanation, I commend the Bill to the House.

3.43 p.m.

Mr. Geoffrey de Freitas: The Secretary of State has clearly explained the purposes of the Bill, which, as I understood him, is that, at the age of 45 or on the 30th June next year, whichever is the earlier, both classes of P and N reservists will cease to have any reserve liability at all. The Bill isolates the Class N reservists, those who began to serve after 1st January, 1949, and continues the reserve liability until the age of 45 or until the 30th June, 1964, whichever is the earlier.
Forty-five is certainly a magical age. The Service Departments write to tell you that your services are no longer required and that you are too old to be of any further use. Suddenly, young men start calling you "Sir," and seem surprised that you can cross the road unaided. Young ladies try to put you at your ease by asking if you really know Cecil Rhodes very well. I have found this myself, since becoming 45 this year.
I shall put one or two questions to the right hon. Gentleman. If that is the purpose of the Bill, the first question is whether the Class P reservists who have no longer a reserve liability will be free to volunteer for non-military duties in the home defence service, and, if so, for what services they may volunteer. The second question is what are the Government's plans for training or calling up those who now have this new reserve liability? I know that the Bill does not refer to any training liability, but this is directly relevant to the question whether it is desirable to impose the reserve liability, which is the purpose of the Bill. The use that is to be made of the services of these men is directly relevant to the answer to the question whether it is a good idea to have this Bill or not.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) and others have pointed out that it is difficult today, with the changing nature of the reserves, to have at any given moment a clear picture of the categories of reserves of the Armed Forces, and particularly of the rôles assigned to them. Not long ago, in a debate in the House I referred to the Women's Royal Air Force several times, and one of the national newspapers quoted me as referring to the Women's Royal Auxiliary Air Force and another as referring to the Women's Reserve Air

Force. Many people, who should have known better, appeared doubtful as to the title. It was clear evidence that there is today—because of all the changes there have been in the Reserve forces—a need for the public to get a clear idea what they are.
The Army Regular Reserve is divided into sections, lettered A, B, D, F and G. The Army Emergency Reserve is divided into categories—1a and 1b, and so on. We are discussing the Army General Reserve. We know a little about it from what is printed in the Estimates, but it is very scrappy. It is especially important that we should know the future rôle assigned to these various Reserves. I hope that we can be told something about the Reserves under two headings.
First, the specialist categories. The Suez adventure showed that there had not been maintained an organisation which would allow the categories of specialists to take on, in an emergency tasks which would be uneconomic for them to do in peace conditions—for instance, dock operating—and a proclamation was necessary in that case. As to the second heading of the General Reserve, which is directly related to this Bill, it does not make much sense to impose a longer reserve liability unless some thought is given to the rôle it is to play and to training. This is an immediate question, because of the new school of ground strategy which is being advocated on the Continent.
I refer to the idea of an old-fashioned war of Regulars with mobilised reservists, under the umbrella of the mutual deterrent. It is a fact that on the Continent today many politicians and soldiers have been converted to this rôle of Reserve forces. I believe that it is up to the Government to give us some more idea of how they see the rôle of our reserves in the event of this new ground strategy being adopted on the Continent. The very fact that the Government have introduced this Bill and have asked Parliament to pass it places an onus upon them of saying something about that.
On the general point of the Reserves, we can all accept, even if we are not converts to the new conception of ground strategy, the importance of Reserves of all kinds, because as we move to smaller


and smaller Regular forces, Reserves become more and more important. Apart from that, we need a clear statement from the Government, perhaps in a White Paper of a few pages, to present their ideas on the future of our Reserves. I hope that we shall be given some such assurance from the Government, because this is directly relevant to the purpose of this Bill.

The Under-Secretary of State for Air (Mr. C. Ian Orr-Ewing): The Under-Secretary of State for Air (Mr. C. Ian Orr-Ewing) rose—

3.49 p.m.

Mr. E. Shinwell: The Government are in a hurry to reply, but not a great deal has been said about this important matter. Although this is a very small Bill, and, I believe, is acceptable to hon. Members on both sides of the House, it nevertheless denotes what might properly be described as a revolutionary change. Some years ago, when I had to deal with the question of building up our Reserve forces, I recall that all the military experts—and, generally speaking, we are in the hands of the military experts—

Mr. Roy Mason: Field Marshal Montgomery.

Mr. Shinwell: —not only the Field Marshal—claimed that it was essential to build up a formidable Reserve force, and they talked not in terms of hundreds of thousands, but of millions. At the time their claims were questioned by many people in the War Office and the other Service Departments; nevertheless, their views carried the day.
Now a change has come over the scene. The right hon. Gentleman has come to the conclusion that, instead of many millions of men, a comparatively small number will be required to deal with an emergency situation. Even more significant is the fact that, in the course of his speech, the Minister made quite clear what is the Government's future military policy. He said, "We shall not require so many reservists in the future, because our intention is to rely not so much upon conventional forces but upon the nuclear deterrent and the nuclear weapon"—which, he said, would be forthcoming. He added that we also had the means of delivering it. I am not quite sure about that. I say that with some caution but, I make the statement because the situation changes so rapidly. In the course

of a few years we have come to the conclusion, as witness the right hon. Gentleman's speech, that we no longer require a formidable mass of reservists, but that 600,000 or so would suffice for our purpose.
The right hon. Gentleman went further. He said, "We are looking only five years ahead." That is quite right, because it is impossible to plan a long time ahead, since the situation changes so rapidly. It may well be that the present military strategy, which is apparently acceptable to the Government and is endorsed by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and its constituent elements—which is that we must rely in future more upon the nuclear deterrent and, if it fails, upon nuclear weapons—will be falsified. We may find that, in the unhappy event of a major war, we need to deploy conventional forces in large measure, either because the situation demands it or because of the natural reluctance to deploy nuclear weapons.
Therefore, while accepting the Bill, we must preserve a good deal of caution and watch events. We must not wait for five years and then come to a decision; we must deal with the situation annually, in the light of events.
I welcome the Bill because in one respect it will be acceptable and agreeable to everybody concerned. It absolves a vast number of men from reserve liability. From what I know of Service men, from my experience at the War Office and the Ministry of Defence, I can say that they will be very glad to be absolved from that commitment.
My hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Mr. de Freitas) referred to an interjection I ventured to make in respect of the categories which are required. From 1947 to 1951 we had a great deal of experience of the need for building up special categories. We discovered that the foot soldier, however important he might seem, was less important than the Service man who is deployed in a technical unit, because the Service is becoming more and more mechanised, and requires greater mobility. It is, therefore, desirable to have special technical categories for the purposes that we can foresee for the future. I am not satisfied that the Minister has gone into this matter as carefully as he might have done—

Mr. Soames: I must have explained myself very badly. The Bill does not say in any way that the defence policy of the Government is to rely less upon reservists than hitherto. It is taking off the top of the General Reserve and its equivalent—the men who have served in and since the war and have completed their time in the Colours and in compulsory war service. While we have the general pool of the General Reserve, on top of that there are about 3½ million men who served during and after the war, who will no longer have any liability. That is what the Bill provides.

Mr. Shinwell: I accept that, but that is not my point. It may be that I have explained myself badly. [Interruption.] If I left it to the noble Lord the hon. Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) it would no doubt be explained much more intelligibly, but since I have not the high scholastic ability that has been made available to the noble Lord, I must rely upon my slender resources.
I am trying to explain that if we decide to abolish the present Reserve, namely, the 3½ million men who are liable to serve in the Reserve forces, and are to rely in future upon about 600,000 men, we must ensure that within that number there are sufficient technical units, because they will be needed much more in the future than they were in the past. There should be a break-down of the 650,000 which the right hon. Gentleman hopes to secure, to ensure that we have the right type of men. It is not sufficient merely to rely upon a global Reserve.
Is it likely that the men who are absolved from reserve liability will be permitted to join the Territorial forces and help to build up that auxiliary arm of our defence forces? This is an opportunity for the right hon. Gentleman and his military advisers to secure what they have been trying to secure for many years. We have always had difficulty in building up our Territorial forces. When I was at the War Office our target for the Army was 150,000 men, but we never reached that target, and I would guess that at present the right hon. Gentleman has no more than 60,000 in the Territorial Army. If the right hon. Gentleman wishes to correct me he may do so. We ought to build up that force, because a voluntary auxiliary force is far more satisfactory than a Reserve force, particularly if a

large element of the Reserve force comes from National Service men. I hope that the Government will deal with that aspect, because I believe it to be extremely important.

4.0 p.m.

Mr. John Dugdale: I wish to make some observations about the Bill with reference to its effect upon the Royal Navy. I understand that it extends liability for service in the Reserve to certain persons who are to be used, as was said by the Secretary of State for War, in the case of grave emergency. This does not altogether tie up with the attitude of the Admiralty, which has recently decided to scrap a number of ships. No fewer than six carriers, nine cruisers, 46 frigates, 24 ocean minesweepers, 13 submarines and 14 destroyers are to be scrapped. If there are to be fewer ships, I should have thought that there ought to be fewer men, but that does not appear to be the case.
How many of these men will man ships in time of war? I know that it can be said that many men in the Royal Navy spend their time ashore and not afloat, but it still seems to me that the proportion of those ashore will be very high indeed. I wish the Secretary of State to tell me what proportion of men in the Royal Navy now serve afloat, what proportion serve ashore, what the figures were, say, ten years ago, and what is the figure in the American Navy? It may well be that in the American Navy there are more men ashore.

Mr. Soames: That figure would be difficult to get.

Mr. Dugdale: I think that the right hon. Gentleman might have some difficulty, but he should have an idea of the proportion before asking the House for more reservists, because those reservists are needed for certain purposes. They are to man ships or shore stations and we ought to have some idea whether it is the future intention of the Government that there shall be more and more sailors ashore and fewer and fewer afloat. That would appear to be what is to happen.
I do not know whether the Admiralty will build new ships, replacing those to be scrapped, in which these men will serve. If that is the case, we ought to know. If it is not, we should also be informed, so that we may know what duties they will perform.

4.5 p.m.

Mr. George Wigg: I cannot help thinking that the House finds itself in some difficulty, not because the Secretary of State for War has failed to master his brief but because that brief was inadequate. As, therefore, the Secretary of State for War failed to explain the purpose of the Bill, perhaps I may assist him.
The return of Reserve strength is in the Vote Office. On the date of the last return there were 613,000 men with a reserve liability. This covers all the Regular Army reservists, plus National Service men who have completed their Colour service. Over and above this figure there are a number of men in the General Reserve who are affected by the Bill and who are not reservists in a strict sense at all.
Therefore, when my right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) congratulates the Secretary of State on his liberality in releasing a number of men from their reserve obligations, he is, in fact, thanking the Government for nothing. If these reserves were ever called to the Colours, it would be done as part of a general Proclamation which could be issued in a couple of hours following emergency legislation. The Executive has all the power it needs, so that the Government are not being very generous in introducing this Bill.
Reservists belong to a specific category and they are organised into units or jobs on mobilisation. These men do not belong to that category at all. They are men who have worked out their National Service liability of two years with the colours and three-and-a-half years on the Reserve.
Having failed to make up their mind on their Reserve policy the Government are faced with the problem that the legislation under which these men are enrolled—they are not even enrolled, their names are recorded—expires in the middle of next year, and they have to do something about it. Had our defence policy any contact with reality they should have worked out a Reserve policy and come to the House with a new Measure to supersede the Bill introduced in 1950 by my right hon. Friend the Member for Easington. But, faced with the choice of doing some constructive thinking or making the sort of speech the right hon. Gentleman made this afternoon, the Government chose to allow that speech to be made.

Accordingly, the House finds itself in a state of confusion.
If this amorphous mass of men were recalled they would not constitute an addition to our military strength. The men would be merely an addition to the ration strength. There would be about 3½ million men with no units, and all they possess is a Service number. They have no identity and many do not even know that they have the liability to be recalled.
If hon. Gentlemen really want to see how a Reserve force works and how a mobilisation plan should be operated, they should go back to the years before many of them were born and read the first volume of the Official History of the First World War. There they will find a mobilisation plan. In 1914, there was mobilisation on the Tuesday after the August Bank Holiday, because the then Liberal Government did not want to upset the holiday excursion trains.
In 21 days an Expeditionary Force was put across the Channel. The overwhelming majority of that force were reservists. Sixty thousand horses were impounded, and the Expeditionary Force was in contact with the Germans at first light on 22nd August. Our forefathers could do something then because they thought from first principles. Then the Government would not have dared to come to the House of Commons with such a Measure as this, knowing that they would have to face informed criticism.
If we are to fall back on an assumption of 165,000 men, and contract that figure to the very edge of safety, thought should have been given to what is to be done should we ever need to expand again. But the Government have not even thought about the problems of contracting, never mind the problem of expansion, so we are presented with a half-baked piece of nonsense which has been trotted out as if it is an excuse to get rid of men who have a legal liability of which they are completely unaware.
I say that we should let the Government have their Bill today, but that long before the expiry of five years—unless an angry electorate has done its duty long before then—we shall expect that the Government will do some hard thinking. We shall expect them to have thought out a reasonable policy, not in terms of


the estimated General Reserve but embracing all the categories of reservists of all three Services so that we may have a reserve policy related to a mobilisation plan which at least has some contact with an overall defence policy.

4.8 p.m.

Mr. R. T. Paget: It is rare for a Government to bring before the House of Commons a Bill affecting reservists without having, or even pretending to have, any policy plan. It is an astounding state of affairs. We are contracting from a conscript Army to a volunteer Army. We are contracting to quite a new organisation, and I should have thought that the essence of a volunteer professional Army was quick power of mobilisation. We are asked to accept a Bill dealing with reserves without the Minister who introduced it even suggesting the existence of a mobilisation plan.

4.10 p.m.

Mr. Thomas Steele: I think I might ask a few questions as well, since we have a minute or two to spare. I would first thank the Minister for his opening remarks and for the history which he gave us of the Bill. As he explained, the Government are not asking for new powers; the Bill is an extension of existing powers contained in the 1954 Act for certain categories of men. In the main, the Bill will result in fewer reserves and not more.
Perhaps we might hear from the Government how the 1954 Act powers have been used. For instance, what is the number of occasions on which it has been necessary to use these powers? Can we get information about the number of men actually called up and the length of period which they had to serve? Can we have information about the problems arising in the calling up of men and their return to civil life and how effective the mobilisation machinery has been?
When the Minister introduced the 1954 Bill, he was very specific about how it could be used. He laid considerable emphasis on the matter and he said, in effect, that the call up of these men would only take place in the case of actual or apprehended attack upon the United Kingdom. I understand that no proclamation would be necessary for such an event, but would only be necessary if the men had to go overseas. The other thing

was that the men would be called up if there were imminent national danger or emergency, after a proclamation. The Prime Minister himself, in a prior debate, said that the Bill would be coming along and gave a promise that it would be used only in the greatest war emergency.
We gave our support to that Bill, which became the 1954 Act. We did so because, it should be noted, during the introduction of the Measure it was said:
In a national emergency we shall all be in it together."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th November, 1953; Vol. 520, c. 1654.]
That we understand. I do not know on how many occasions the powers have had to be used, apart from the Suez operation, and I am not so sure that the Suez operation was something in which we were all in together. That is an example of the kind of thing that can happen. It shows that, whatever the good intentions of the Government may have been when a Bill is introduced, when they get the powers something different may happen. It should be made clear that the Suez operation was not the kind of thing that we visualised when we supported the Measure in 1954.
We welcome the Bill in so far as it releases the liability of the men who served between 1939 and 1948. I do so for one very personal reason. One of the most persistent hecklers at all my meetings has been a man who has been in that category, and he has taken every opportunity to pester me about this liability. He agrees that in 1954 something was done to ease and share the responsibility and he is still very conscious of his liability; but he has not been satisfied. After this Bill becomes law I can see that I shall have one satisfied constituent on that matter. [An HON. MEMBER: "Only one?"] I am saying that he is satisfied only on this particular point.
The other point I want to mention is the provision of age 45 in the Bill. Why should it still be 45? When the Minister moved the Second Reading today he explained that five years hence the age would be about 34, so it does not seem reasonable that we should still have 45 in the Bill. There may be some reason for its being here. There was, earlier on, some reluctance even on the part of the Minister to keep the age at 45. He hoped that it might be lower. The main purpose of the Act was to ensure that


mobilisation would be speedy and that men who had the liability should know about it so that there would be no necessity for sending forms backwards and forward to see where the men were and to arrange that their skill and knowledge would be known with a view to our getting the right men in the right place at the right time.
With the general reduction of the powers, the speed of effective mobilisation is much more important that ever, Whether the Government will have the transport to take the men where they ought to be after mobilisation is another matter, which we shall no doubt come to in later debates. We are entitled to an assurance that the system is efficient and up to date and, if required to act speedily, would be able to take the strain and show results.

4.17 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Air (Mr. C. Ian Orr-Ewing): Perhaps I might deal, first, with the point raised by the hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr. de Freitas), the age of 45. He himself said that he had passed that yardstick or milestone. I found myself passing it very shortly after I was appointed to this office, when I received a notice from another branch of the Air Ministry which said that I, having reached this advanced age, was no use to the Air Force from that day and might as well give up. It was nicely couched, but I remember thinking that it was rather a snap judgment. I informed them that I had been given, by the Prime Minister, an opportunity for an extension of service.
The hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, West (Mr. Steele) asked why we were retaining this age at 45. There will not be many people held to have liabilities up to this age, but there are a few, particularly in the professional classes, like doctors, who came in very late, say at 26 years of age. Therefore, we want to keep this age, although there are not many people affected by it.
The right hon. Member for Easingtonton (Mr. Shinwell) underlined what was said by my right hon. Friend, that the situation has changed immensely as the result of the development of nuclear weapons, and particularly of the H-bomb. It is only right that the Government should have a flexible outlook, and

that is why we ask for a five-year period during which to consider the realism even of the present methods.
It is perhaps not generally realised what categories will not be affected by this Bill. Perhaps I should underline that. The hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) brought out the point, but I think it should be underlined, that the Regular reserves are not in any way affected by this Bill, nor are the National Service reserves, who have a three-and-a-half year liability after National Service. They will continue to have that liability. Of course, all the auxiliaries, Territorial and volunteer Reserve forces will continue to have a liability and are not in any way affected by the Bill. The Bill deals only with the last line of reserves. As the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, West said, the gravest national emergency would call on this particular category of reservists.
The right hon. Member for West Bromwich (Mr. Dugdale) asked how the Bill would affect the Navy. He asked for a number of figures, but I am unable to give them. As a matter of fact, many of them would not be affected by the Bill. If the right hon. Gentleman will put down a Question he might have difficulty with regard to the United States Navy forces, but his ingenuity would be tested to the full and my right hon. Friend would no doubt do his best to reply.

Mr. Dugdale: That is an easy way of getting out of it. Can the hon. Gentlemn at least tell me one figure? How many men out of this total will be allotted to the Royal Navy? Quite apart from any other details and categories, he surely should know that.

Mr. Orr-Ewing: I shall be delighted to tell the right hon. Member how many will be affected by the Bill, but he asked how many ashore and afloat and how many ships would be concerned. In the Royal Navy Special Reserve there will be fewer than 20,000 at this present time and that number will increase. I do not want to give hard and fast figures, but there will be almost double that number at the end of the period, in 1964. That is the sort of number which would be affected in the last line of reservists for the Royal Navy.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about certain ships. If he puts Questions on


the Order Paper that may be a rather more apposite way of dealing with the problem.
The hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) said that there were absolutely no plans for mobilisation. That really is not true. I should not wish it to go out from the House that there are no plans for mobilisation; of course there are, and for calling up exactly the categories I have enumerated, the categories with reserve liability, the National Service men, Territorials and volunteer forces. All those are meticulously categorised for mobilisation procedure and there is also procedure for this general last line of reserves. I hope that the hon. and learned Member will not think that we would come to the House in these critical, dangerous days without having very exact plans for mobilisation.

Mr. Paget: With the new organisation of the Army taking place even in those categories which are not touched by the Bill at all, in a single general mobilisation how many of them would know where they are to go and for how many of them is equipment allocated and ready at a particular place for them to take on? That is what I mean by a mobilisation scheme.

Mr. Orr-Ewing: I think that I should be testing the rules of order if I tried to answer for people who are not affected by the Bill. We are debating the Second Reading of a Bill for a quite different category. I have no doubt that the hon. and learned Member will have an opportunity of developing his argument on another occasion.

Mr. Paget: I am sure the hon. Gentleman will agree that there is no mobilisation scheme whatever for any of the people affected by this Bill; and, as to the others, I believe that there is very little in the way of a scheme.

Mr. Orr-Ewing: However the hon. and learned Member underlines his words, there is a mobilisation scheme for these people. These are the people to be called up in the gravest national emergency, which might mean global war, and there are many categories to be called up before that during a period of tension. I wish it to go out from this House that the organisation of these reserves is very highly categorised, and very thoroughly categorised for all three Services.

Mr. Shinwell: I should not expect the hon. Gentleman on this or any other occasion to furnish details to the House of the actual details of mobilisation plans, but perhaps he will answer this question, which emerges from what he said previously. If the intention is to call up the last line of Reserves, amounting to about 600,000, at some future date, in addition we shall have the Supplementary Reserve, plus the Regular Reserve, plus the Territorial Army and the Auxiliary Force and the National Service Reserve, which will go on for some time. Will he now say what the Reserve will be? It will not be 600,000, but much more than 1 million. Has he any idea what it will be?

Mr. Orr-Ewing: I could not give the exact figures straight off the cuff, but the right hon. Member is absolutely right. It would be substantially more than 600,000, because we have all the reservists of a high priority. Above this line of reservists the number will build up until, at the expiring of the term of the Bill, it will be more than 1 million; it may be 1·2 million. Above these figures are the trained reserves, the ex-Regular and Territorial Army reserves category.

Mr. Dugdale: Mr. Dugdale rose—

Mr. Orr-Ewing: May I now discuss matters in the Bill? We have been discussing things which do not arise from the Bill.

Mr. Dugdale: This does arise from the Bill. These men are to be called up in the event of an emergency. Am I correct in saying that the hon. Gentleman maintains that we have a plan for men who would go in the case of a local war, but no general plan in the case of a global war, and these men are to be affected if there is a global war?

Mr. Wigg: It is true that the Bill imposes a liability upon X number of men. The hon. Gentleman has not the foggiest notion of any possible contingency under which they could be called up, and even if he could visualise such a contingency he would not know what to do with them when they were called up.

Mr. Orr-Ewing: I cannot accept the implication of the right hon. Member for West Bromwich and I do not think that the House would expect me to. The Territorial Army is ahead of this reserve and Territorials would be the


first called up. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) said, it would be in a grave national emergency that we would call on these people and they might be used, in the first instance, to bring the Regular Army up to strength.
The hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, West asked a number of pertinent questions about the way in which we have used this Reserve. That, to some extent, illustrates the matters we have been discussing. This Reserve has never been used. He asked when it was used, but it has never been used. He asked what numbers had been used and the answer is that none has been called up. He asked what problems had arisen in resettling them; none has arisen. That covers the hon. Member's questions about the Suez crisis. Numbers of the Regular reservists in the prior categories were called up, but they are not the reserves we are debating this afternoon.
I should like to deal with one or two points which have arisen and to make one announcement to the House. The hon. Member for Lincoln asked whether these Reserves would be free to join some Civil Defence forces. That is a point with which I shall deal in a moment. Connected with that there has been some doubt as to training for fire defence duties. The scheme for training National Service airmen for firefighting duties will end at the end of this year. With the rundown of the Air Force, sufficient manpower will not be available to continue beyond that date.
However, the effect of the Bill will be to ensure that more than 24,000 ex-National Service airmen already trained on fire-fighting duties will be available for such duty for five extra years. The expiry of the 1954 Act, together with the Bill, will free from reserve liability nearly 3 million men. I am sure that many of these men would still wish to serve their country in some form or other, and from the passing of the Bill they are released from their reserve commitments.
The right hon Gentleman asked me whether men would be free to join the Territorial Army. These men have always been free to join the Territorial Army or other Reserve forces, but on joining them they cease to be members of this particular category of Reserve. There is no extra freedom there. There is freedom for the category who have had a reserve liability and who previously had not been free to join our home defence services. They would be most welcome in the Civil Defence Corps, the Industrial Civil Defence Service, the Auxiliary Fire Service, and the National Hospital Service Reserve and one more, allied with the Royal Air Force, the Royal Observer Corps, which is another home service in which men need to be free from reserve liability and will be very welcome indeed.
The House, I think, would wish to thank the 3 million men who are shortly, to be released from all reserve liability. We hope that they will find an opportunity either in the voluntary forces or in the Civil Defence Service to continue to serve the country. I hope, therefore, that the House will now give a Second Reading to the Bill.

Mr. de Freitas: Would the Under-Secretary look at this point; will particular incentive and encouragement be given to those men who have been trained in specialised Civil Defence to encourage them now that they are free to join?

Mr. Orr-Ewing: I was referring to them when I said that 24,000 were trained in the fire-fighting service for the Civil Defence rôle will continue to have a liability. They are National Service men and will continue to have a liability for a further five years.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. E. Wakefield.]

Committee Tomorrow.

ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON RECRUITING (REPORT)

4.33 p.m.

The Secretary of State for War (Mr. Christopher Soames): I beg to move,
That this House takes note of the Report of the Advisory Committee on Recruiting (Command Paper No. 545) and the Govern-flumes comments thereupon (Command Paper No. 570).
I should like to say at the outset how much we welcome this opportunity to debate the Report of the Grigg Committee. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence gave it the widest possible terms of reference and appointed as its Chairman and members people who have a reputation for saying what they think without fear or favour. We therefore naturally expected that the Report would contain some criticism as well as constructive suggestions, and on both counts we welcome it.
The onlooker, at any rate the well-informed onlooker, often sees more of the game than the participants, and this issue of recruiting for the three Services is one of such overriding importance that no personal or Departmental amour propre should be allowed to stand in the way of an unbiassed expression of facts, such as this Report contains.
I am glad that the Report received such wide publicity, but it was rather a pity that in some quarters it tended at the time to be over simplified and represented as if its main theme was an attack on "bull". Anyone who has read the Report itself will realise that that is far from being the case. It covers almost every range of Service activity and environment, because the truth of the matter is that the subject of recruiting for the voluntary forces is as wide as the activities that these forces perform. Every aspect of life on them can be regarded as an encouragement or a deterrent to recruiting. As for the ugly word "bull", I recommend a careful reading of paragraphs 127 to 136 of the Report. The impression given there is a favourable one to the Services and goes a long way to discredit the impression sometimes spread abroad of irksome and unnecessary discipline on a large scale.
As far as the main body of the Report is concerned, I think that the House will have recognised the importance we attach

to it by the large number of recommendations which have already been accepted, and accepted, I think the House will agree, with commendable promptitude, in marked contrast to the fate of many other Reports of Committees set up in the past by successive Governments.
The question of recruiting for a voluntary Service is affected by every aspect of life in it, and it would not be possible to cover the whole ground of the Report in one speech. I should like to discuss, first, the question of the recruitment of other ranks, with particular reference to the table and chart at Appendix A of the Report. I should then like to devote some time to a consideration of the officer recruiting problem and then to say something about accommodation and equipment.
Firstly, as to the other rank recruiting, hon. Members will be aware of the great upsurge in recruitment in terms of man-years which for the Regular Army this year represents a 70 per cent. increase over 1957, up to the end of September, and for the Royal Air Force a 40 per cent. increase. While recognising that our problem here is one of a long haul and that the experience of nine months does not prove that everything is going to be all right for four years ahead, the fact remains that we can today say that, if present trends continue, we shall reach our target by the beginning of 1963 and that our manpower worries will be concerned only with certain categories of specialists rather than with the field as a whole.
How right my right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence was to stand firm against the barrage of woeful forecasts which were being freely thrown across the Floor of the House a year ago, particularly by the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg).

Mr. George Wigg: I apologise for interrupting the right hon. Gentleman but if he makes that comment he must start by explaining to the House how it comes about that in December, 1957, when Sir James Grigg had his first brief from the Mininister of Defence, he found recruiting to be 50 per cent. of the figure required, and the Government have taken their decision—gamble is the right word—and are still gambling on it today.

Mr. Soames: I can see why the hon. Gentleman does not like it. Within a matter of a week or so of my coming into this office, there was an Adjournment debate, in which the hon. Gentleman said that we had not a hope of getting the figures we wanted. He said earlier on that we should be very lucky to get 100,000, and there was no earthly sign of it. It was generally a tale of woe.
What matters is the future. To judge from some remarks the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey) made in the course of a debate on the continuation of the Army Act three weeks ago, I think that the very interesting table and chart shown at Appendix A of the Grigg Committee's Report may have come as a surprise to him, as the Report concludes that the Services need to recruit one in three from the available field of manpower in the next four years and thereafter one in four in order to attain the numbers which they require after the field has been narrowed down, as the Committee has shown it has done.
The right hon. Gentleman suggested in his speech that the Government's confidence in reaching their declared manpower targets is not well-founded because it is based on a once-for-all recruiting bonus this year and it will be more difficult to maintain these figures. That is a fair point. To keep up voluntary recruitment is a long-distance race, not a sprint. Anyone who enters this truly stricken statistical field must take great care not to be thrown off balance by the appearance of short-term figures, which have little relevance to the long-term position.
The trend of this year's recruiting figures departs in a significant respect from those of the past. It has always been the case in successive Services' pay reviews since the war that an increase in pay has brought about a spurt in recruiting which has been all too short lived and left us, only a few months afterwards, no better off in terms of the number of men recruited than we were before. So far, there has been no sign of that this year. Pay and allowances were improved at the beginning of April. In 1956, when there was also a pay increase in April, April was the best recruiting month of the year. Everything after that was anti-climax. This year,

the April figures were almost repeated in July and August, and were surpassed in September.
What does the hon. Member for Dudley say about the September figures? The other day, he came to the House, having said a year earlier that we should not get more than 100,000, and he agreed that, until September, we were recruiting at the rate needed to meet the targets which have been set. But he went on with another new tale of woe; we could be certain that October this year would not be as good as September. Indeed, he went further and said he did not believe that the recruiting figures next year would ever equal the figures of this September.
Another month has gone by. We now have the October figures. The hon. Gentleman knows very well that what matters is the level of recruitment in terms of man years. In terms of man years, October was better than September. Really, if the hon. Gentleman goes on much longer crying his tale of woe in this way, he will become like poor little Matilda, in the Cautionary Tales":
For every time she shouted 'Fire!'
They only answered 'Little liar'",
or whatever it was. His tales of woe come every year.
For the next few years, while the Army's Regular strength is being built up by six-year enlistments replacing the three-year men, whose number is now running down, we shall need one in three or one in four of the available and suitable young men to join the Services. The recruiting figures so far this year have clearly shown that this is not an impossible requirement. Further, there is no doubt that an improvement in conditions in the forces will have an appreciable effect on the proportion of men willing to re-engage beyond the six- and nine-year points, thereby, of course, increasing the average length of service and thus reducing the need for new recruits to something under one in four. The older man contemplating prolongation is, more often than not, married, and that is why we have been so glad to accept the Grigg Committee's recommendations on disturbance allowance and education allowance.
The Government have accepted also the great majority of the Committee's recommendations on the women's Services and have taken the opportunity to reaffirm the great importance they attach to the work


which these Services do in both peace and war. There is a wide range of essential tasks in the Services which women can do quite as well as men, and there are some for which they have a more natural aptitude. The women's Services will be an important feature of our all-Regular forces, and our hope is that a growing number of girls will realise that there is an important and rewarding job to be done in the Services.
The Committee made a broad survey of the position as regards officer recruitment, and its criticisms are directed more at the Army than at the other two Services. Here I must join issue with the Committee, not over the bare fact that all three Services have an officer recruiting problem but over the causes which it adumbrates as being responsible for the Army shortage. In paragraph 18, the Committee says that the Army's planned annual entry of cadets is 648. In paragraph 195, it goes on to say that
it should he possible to reduce the Sandhurst intake to 350 or 400 a year".
In fact, our target is not 648 a year. It is 480 a year, of whom about 75 will come from Welbeck, and a considerable, though inevitably a varying proportion, will be young men who go to Sandhurst direct from the ranks. Many of the comments which the Committee makes on the Army's shortfall in officer recruitment seem to me to stem from this false premise that we were planning for about 650 cadets a year into Sandhurst.

Mr. George Brown: Who told the Committee? Am I not right in supposing that that figure appeared in a paper submitted to the Committee by one of the Service Departments, either the right hon. Gentleman's own or the Ministry of Defence?

Mr. Soames: So far as I know, it was not the figure which went out from my Department.

Mr. Brown: The right hon. Gentleman had better inquire.

Mr. Soames: Yes, I will do that.
I come now to our selection procedure. Why is it that more suitable boys are not coming forward for commissions? Many headmasters have, at one time or another, visited Sandhurst and the Regular Commissions Board, and there is constant liaison with schools and

careers masters by visiting officers appointed full time for the purpose. The natural reaction to the analysis of passes and failures among boys from public schools, grammar schools, and from schools in the South and schools in the North, which is published in Appendix F to the Report, might be the impression that there is some bias, whether by class or accent, in the Regular Commissions Board against candidates who do not come from public schools. If this were the case, the Army Council's declared policy would be thwarted, and I should certainly set about altering the system immediately.
All the evidence I have, including the testimony of many independent people who have visited the Regular Commissions Board, fails to bear out any such conclusion. Incidentally, I hope that any hon. Members who are interested will find the time to visit the Regular Commissions Board and see for themselves the process of selection in action. I should be delighted to help in any way I could with the arrangements for such a visit.
What I think the figures in Appendix F show is that a far smaller proportion of the best pupils from grammar schools think of the Army as a career than do boys from public schools. This trend is accentuated in schools north of the Trent, in many of which there is but a small tradition, if any, of sending boys into the Services. There is no quick, magic remedy for this. It must be a process of gradually getting across to headmasters, careers masters, parents and boys the fact that these opportunities are available in the Services, and that a career in them can offer just as much as, and, in many cases, more than, a career in business.
We shall do all we can to get these things across, but one thing we will not do is to lower the standards which we set. Our aim is to recruit the numbers we need, of the standard required, from all sources open to us.

Mr. Wigg: Before the right hon. Gentleman passes from that reference to there being no tradition north of the Trent for young men to seek to become officers, will he say whether he is quite satisfied that there is no prejudice in the mind of the selection board against them?

Mr. G. Brown: And against their accent?

Mr. Soames: That is the very point I was making. I am absolutely content with what I have found, and I hope that right hon. and hon. Gentlemen will visit the Board and form their own impression. It is certainly my impression—I say this absolutely sincerely—that there is no question of such a prejudice.
As regards recruiting officers from the ranks, I can only endorse the Committee's recommendation. I assure the House that we appreciate how necessary it is that our system of selection should be so arranged that a potential officer serving in the ranks should not fail to have his chance of a commission. Having been in office in all three Service Departments, I should like to make the point that, when comparing the opportunities for obtaining a commission from the ranks in the Army with those in the other two Services, to the disadvantage of the Army, it should be remembered that the structure of the Royal Navy and of the Royal Air Force nowadays makes a much greater demand for technical officers, skilled in specific specialities, than the Army ever will, even though the Army has moved a long way in the same direction.
To a large extent, the greater opportunities for reaching commissioned rank in the Royal Navy or the Royal Air Force spring from the demand for a large number of specialists. However technical the Army becomes, the great majority of its officers must, in the nature of things, be fit for general regimental duty and the command of troops in the field. We need specialists, but we need far more all-rounders with some specialist knowledge. Nevertheless, I assure the House that within the limitations which the framework of the Army's organisation is bound to impose on us, everything possible will be done to ensure that rankers fit to hold commissions are not passed over.
That brings me to what the Committee described as
the biggest single impediment to the recruitment of officers"—
the length of career now offered in the Services. The Committee recommends that the career structure should be redesigned so that, as far as possible, officers have the choice of either retiring before 40 or being kept in employment till 60. If this were possible, it would go a long way to removing the difficulties which

many officers now face when they have to resettle themselves in civil life in their late forties or early fifties, at an age when many firms are reluctant to take on new entrants and when the individual concerned probably still has considerable family commitments and responsibilities.
Obviously what the Committee recommends would, from the point of view of the individual, be an ideal solution, but it implies such far-reaching changes in the career structure of the three Services that it must have very long and detailed consideration before the Government could reach conclusions. On the one hand, we have the interests of the individual which are fully served by the Committee's recommendation, and, on the other hand, the interests of the Services and of the nation itself which has a right to demand that the fighting Services must be as efficient as possible. There are posts that can be filled by men in their fifties, but there are many more that cannot. Scrambling over rocks in Aden on a hot day is not an occupation to be recommended for those in the sere and yellow leaf.
We shall in the months ahead be devoting a lot of time to this problem, and though we would not be able to guarantee service to 60 for all officers who chose to stay on, I do not doubt that we will be able so to alter the management of our affairs to enable us to give officers an idea of their prospects at an earlier age on the one hand, and, on the other, to offer employment to a later age to a proportion of those who stay on. Indeed, a study to this effect was put in hand in the War Office some months back.
Now I turn to accommodation. The Committee, no doubt measuring its words, has said that
too much of present accommodation, both married and single, is nothing short of scandalous.
With this passage I, and I think every other Minister who has served in a Service Department since the end of the war, and even probably since the end of the first war, will readily agree. The public has a right to ask, if that is the case, with the vast sums of money spent by the Service since the last war, with the good will and eagerness of successive Governments supported by Parliament to improve living conditions, and the knowledge that bad accommodation must be


one of the most serious disincentives that there is to recruiting, how it is that more has not yet been done.
Here again, this is a bigger problem for the Army than for the other two Services, because the Royal Air Force has not inherited any 18th or 19th century barracks, and the Royal Navy, although it has its accommodation problems, is in the nature of things concentrated for the most part around the home ports and its main bases overseas.
At the end of the war Service accommodation was suffering, just as civilian housing was, from the six years in which there had been no permanent building and during which, serious damage had been caused by enemy action. So far the Services' problem was comparable pro rata with the civilian one, and everyone knows just how severe that was. But, over and above that, there was the fact that with National Service the Army and the Royal Air Force were much larger than they had ever been before in peace time. The Army, for example, had for several years a strength of around half a million compared with 200,000 prewar. The only assets that we had to show, which were not available pre-war, were good barracks and accommodation which had been requisitioned in Germany. This was far more than offset by the greater size of the forces and by the amount of permanent accommodation that we gave up in India, Pakistan, Burma, Egypt and the Sudan. Over and above this, there was a national tendency to get married at an earlier age which made nonsense of the pre-war scales of married quarters.
So much for a start. But, in addition, throughout the post-war years the Services had been on active service in large numbers all over the world, in Palestine, Malaya, Hong Kong, the Canal Zone, Kenya and Cyprus. In all those places we have had large numbers of men for considerable periods where, before the war, there was little if any Army accommodation. That has meant that everywhere large sums of money have had to be spent on temporary building; not good accommodation, not lasting accommodation—in most cases it was far below peace-time standards—but accommodation that had to be put up to give a reasonable standard of comfort and shelter on a temporary basis
As a result of all this, between 1947 and 1957 out of £255 million voted for works services for the Army, £140 million had to be spent on maintenance and minor improvements and £40 million on temporary accommodation. That has left the War Office with an average of just under £6 million a year to spend on permanent living accommodation at home and overseas. That is why it can truly be said in 1958 that some Service accommodation is as bad as the Grigg Committee had to report.
We are under no illusions about the need to improve Service accommodation, and I recognise the fallacy of thinking that we can attract men to serve in living conditions worse than those to which they are used in civilian life. I speak of permanent accommodation for standing garrisons in permanent stations. So long as the world remains in the unsettled state to which we have had to grow accustomed since the war, there is no remedying the fact that from time to time every serving man may find himself for some period in a temporary station where economic grounds alone preclude us from building the proper scale of peace-time accommodation. I think the Services as a whole realise this. They do not expect to have home comforts all the time. They did not join the forces for that. But they do have a right to expect that a permanent station should have decent living accommodation. That is our aim, and, providing we do not have to spend too much of our works votes on temporary accommodation to meet sudden and passing emergencies, the next five years will see a striking improvement world wide.

Mr. R. T. Paget: In fact, has the House ever refused the money which they were in a position to spend for these purposes and was this tremendous need of the Services considered by the Conservative Party when it promised 300,000 houses to civilians? We could not have both.

Mr. Soames: Indeed not. There has been very considerable building done; but the point is that it was such an enormous problem, not only in this country but world wide.
In paragraph 137, and those following, the Committee had some very pointed things to say about the state of the


Army's equipment. Right hon. Gentlemen who have been in office in the Service Departments will appreciate that such criticism cannot be altogether unwelcome to a Secretary of State for War when it appears, as this did, at the time of the year when the size of the next year's Estimates is being settled. The story has been rehearsed too often for me to repeat it in detail here—a long war, huge dumps of surplus stores, the nation wanting money spent for large numbers of civil purposes and the Army being forced back on to using up its war-time surpluses.
But the re-equipment of an army is something which goes inevitably in phases. Though we have not been able to re-equip our Army as we should have liked to do in the post-war years, what really matters is that by 1962–63 our much smaller all-Regular force should be equipped with the best that can be provided. We are entering now into a phase of re-equipment, and in many ways it is as well that that phase should be coming now rather than that it should have been and gone, say, five or ten years ago.
From now on we shall be benefiting from the forward-thinking of my predecessors. I see it as my job to keep up the momentum of re-equipment and, at the same time, to be looking yet further ahead in terms of research and development. It is my firm belief that by 1962 the Army will have broken the back of its re-equipment problem. Of course, there will still be improvements to be made—it is a continuing process—but the troubles we have today of a wide range of outworn and outmoded equipment will be things of the past.
Governments set up many committees. The reports of some are disappointing and the reports of others are pedestrian. Just a few are outstanding, and I think that the Grigg Committee's Report is among them. We are deeply indebted to the Committee's Chairman and its members for an outstanding document which has caught the imagination of all concerned with the future of the fighting Services. We take the point that the Report and the recommendations should be seen as a whole, and we intend to follow through the Committee's recommendations with all the attention and urgency which they deserve.

5.3 p.m.

Mr. John Strachey: I do not think that the Secretary of State for War will have any difficulty in carrying the whole House with him when he thanks the members of the Grigg Committee and congratulates them on their Report. It is certainly a first-rate Report, as I think that every hon. Member on this side of the House agrees. In fact, how could we think anything else when the Report makes literally dozens of recommendations which we have been making persistently from this side of the House?
It is very gratifying to see some of the strictures, as well as some of the recommendations, which we have been making for so long embodied in this authoritative document, and which we trust are about to receive, on the part of the Government, the action that they deserve. There are a dozen things—on equipment, accommodation, pensions, education, discipline, training, and the like—in the Report which we have said again and again both from the Front Bench and from the back benches on this side of the House, and they are put extremely well in the Report.
I wish to address a word of congratulation to the members of the Grigg Committee on the presentation of their Report. I think that the Government, too, are to be congratulated on having, in the course of their recruiting campaign, taken the precaution to recruit Mr. Hugh Cudlipp as a member of that Committee, because I think that I detect his highly professional hand in the presentation of some of the Report. It is a very good job indeed. It starts with a sort of social survey comparing the present position of the country with that in the inter-war years, and not a bad short survey it is. It is relevant, too, because that is undoubtedly the background against which all efforts at recruiting have to be seen.
Like the Secretary of State, I will say a word or two first of all on the recruiting side, especially as the right hon. Gentleman took up some questions which I asked in our recent debate on the subject of Appendix A. The right hon. Gentleman said that the Appendix surprised him. I do not know about that, but, in my opinion, it certainly is, as I pointed out then, at variance both with the Report


itself and still more with the Government's comments on the Report—that they are confident of getting their men.
It is not that I doubt the Government's confidence in getting their men. Of course, as the right hon. Gentleman said, we cannot tell for certain yet, but I quite agree that every sign is distinctly good and optimistic in that respect. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, I have never been one of those who thinks that this is an impossible task; but I am bound to say—and nothing which the right hon. Gentleman said today seems to contradict this—that if Appendix A were really sound—I am not suggesting that its arithmetic was wrong—and if its presuppositions were really correct, I doubt very much whether, in spite of the recent recruiting figures, there was the prospect of getting the men. It has never seemed to me very realistic to believe that we were really going to get one in three or, later, one in four of all the available men for the Services.
I am bound to say that one must either take an extremely pessimistic view or believe that the assumptions embodied in Appendix A really are not sound. What are those assumptions? The assumption of Appendix A, it seems to me, is that ail those classes of young men who were, in effect, exempted or at any rate deferred from National Service are unavailable for voluntary recruiting. I do not think that that is a very sound assumption at all. I think that is the error that crept into the Appendix. It is important to point it out because, otherwise, the whole matter is extremely puzzling.
I think that the calm assumption that the 86,000 apprentices and articled pupils who were not available for National Service are unavailable for voluntary recruiting is unsound. It really amounts to suggesting that in future only the dullards will join the Army. That is simply not the case. Nor do I think it is the case in respect of the 14 per cent. who receive advanced education. I think that the Report has excluded far too many men from the available pool from which recruits can be obtained.
I wish to ask whoever is to reply to the debate how many, for example, of the 9,000 men who joined the Army, as shown in the last quarterly returns, were 18-year-olds and how many came at a

later stage. As I read the figures—and I do not pretend to be certain about this—quite a high number, something like 4,000, were not 18-year-olds at all. Some of those were no doubt once-and-for-all men—we cannot count on that flow going on—but others may well have to come from those categories which are ruled out, as it were, in Appendix A.
I am putting that forward only as a suggestion which can partly explain what is happening. Otherwise, if one really has to take Appendix A at its face value, one has to doubt the present recruiting figures, because as they stand they mean that we are recruiting at the preposterous rate of three out of four of all the available men. The Secretary of State has just told us that that has gone on in October again, as well as in September. I just do not believe that three out of four of all the available 18-year-olds are joining the Services.
Therefore, one has either to come to the conclusion that Appendix A is based on a false assumption or one has to doubt the present recruiting figures, and if one were to do that he would be like the man who went to the zoo, looked a long time at a giraffe, shook his head and said, "There is no such animal." I do not think that is a possible view to take and, therefore, I am bound to say that I think Appendix A must have been misconceived. It is a pity it has been put into the Report because it confuses the whole issue as it stands.
I should like to go from that to another question which is lightly touched on—

Mr. Paget: Before my right hon. Friend leaves that matter, since it is, perhaps, best to keep the questions on one thing together, I wonder if he will allow me to ask if we may hear a little, in the Government's reply, about the 31,000 who are unfit by Service standards on grounds other than medical?

Mr. Strachey: That is another interesting thing, I agree.

Mr. Paget: It is an extraordinary number.

Mr. G. Brown: There are not that number of brigadiers about.

Mr. Strachey: I come to a question which the Secretary of State did not mention. Of course, it was quite


impossible for him to have mentioned all the matters mentioned in the Report. Nor can I, but I think this is an important one, where the Report recommends that there should be an "automatic"—that is its word—biennial review of pay.
I do not think anyone could doubt when reading the Report that the intention of the Committee there is that the pay and emoluments of the Services should be made what is usually called inflation-proof: that, by and large, if there were marked rises in the cost of living, those should be met in the biennial pay review. What the Government say about this in their comments on the Report are just these words:
The Government agree that Service pay and pension should be reviewed regularly at intervals of not more than two years.
That is all right as far as it goes, but we were disturbed in a recent debate in this House when the Minister of Health seemed to imply that there was no intention in this biennial pay review in the Armed Services of keeping the pay and emoluments of the Services broadly in line with the cost of living, and the Minister of Defence, it seemed to me, took much the same view.
If the Government are now to say, "Oh, yes, we have agreed to the Grigg recommendation that there should be a biennial pay review, but this pay review is to have nothing to do with the cost of living; we shall look at the pay and emoluments, which may go up and down, but there is no implication that they are to meet any marked rise in the cost of living," then I am afraid that on this side of the House we must say to them that they will profoundly disappoint all the expectations which have been aroused by the words in the Grigg Report and by the Government's apparent acceptance of them.
Every ordinary man in the street will interpret that inevitably as a pledge on the part of the Government of a biennial review, which will not automatically and mechanically, but by and large, keep the pay and emoluments in line with the cost of living. The Government really will stir up a great deal of trouble for themselves if they try to give a different impression now from the one which has quite inevitably been given by the recommendation and by their apparent acceptance of it.
Next I should like to take up the paragraphs in the Grigg Report on discipline and training. I agreed with the Secretary of State that I thought they were good paragraphs. I thought they were sane in the sense that there is no silly sentimentalism about them. They are quite clear that it is the best disciplined, smartest and, in a sense, strictest units which are the ones which are recruited best and recruited most easily. That is, I think, a very important fact which we should all bear in mind.
On the other hand, the Grigg Committee does make some quite important criticisms and comments on what I would call the formalistic side of discipline. It considers undesirable and unnecessary some which still exists, above all, it suggests, in the Army, and remarks in paragraph 61 of its Report:
The military policemen patrolling the London railway stations symbolise everything the Service man dislikes on this score; he feels that, unlike men in other walks of life, he is not treated as a responsible adult.
Farther on, the Committee makes rather severe criticisms of the Royal Air Force in particular for dropping or allowing to lapse a good deal of what it calls the Benson experiment, and of the failure of the Services as a whole to modernise themselves and to civilise themselves wholly in these respects to deal with things like unnecessary, elaborate pay parades, kit inspections, formalistic mounting of guards over one gate when no guard at all is mounted on the other gates—points of that sort which, though they may not be very big things, are things which the men feel strongly about and which are important.
All this is in the Report, and I am a little disturbed, I must say, at the Government's comments on all this, because we find under the heading, "Discipline and Training," these words:
The Government fully endorse the Committee's remarks about the importance of making training interesting and providing adequate facilities.
Of course, everyone agrees with that; but considering that the Report has made these quite severe strictures on parts at any rate of the administration—it is really that—of the Services in discipline and training, I think they ought to have dealt with them more adequately and to have stated either that the Grigg Report was wrong on these issues or that they


accepted its recommendations on them. We should like to hear a little more about what the Government really think of these not world-shaking but quite important issues.
Now I come to a part about which the Secretary of State did say something, though he did not say a great deal, and that is the part on equipment. I think it is so important that I imagine a good deal more will be heard of it, certainly from this side of the House, and, I expect, from the other side, too; and I expect that my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) will have a good deal to say about it later on. I would make only a little comment on it as it affects the Army specifically and the defence forces as a whole.
I really cannot resist reading a few sentences from paragraph 64 of the Grigg Report and what it says about equipment as it exists today in the Army. The House must take notice when an officially appointed Government Committee says things like this:
In Cyprus we visited a company of Royal Engineers which was expected to operate some vehicles over a quarter of a century old. In Germany, where the British Army is seen side by side with the forces of other N.A.T.O. countries, units were attempting to keep on the road rebuilt three-tonners from the Second World War. It seems quite a common practice in the Army to send two cars on a journey to ensure that at least one of them finally reaches the destination. One piece of military wireless equipment in general use goes back to the last War and is now quite out of date. We were told of British units in Germany borrowing equipment from the armies of other countries so that they could make a passable show in combined exercises.
We have been saying these things, without this authority, from these benches for a long time, and nobody has taken very much notice. But here is a Committee which the Government themselves appointed saying these things, and we really should expect some explanation of them.
One explanation, of course, is given in relation to the Army in paragraph 138 of the Grigg Report, where we are told:
The amount allocated by the Army to production has declined by 65 per cent. over the five years, and they are now getting about 15 per cent. of the total for the three Services, as compared with over 30 per cent, five years ago.
That is the monetary calculation of what has happened, but it does not tell us why it has happened. It does not tell us why

the War Office and, of course, the Ministry of Defence, for it is its responsibility too, have made this startling reduction in the proportion of money voted for equipment. I could not think that the explanations given by the Secretary of State for War held water or that his defence was adequate at all in this respect.
The Minister of Defence may say in reply that we seem to be pressing here for expenditure of still greater sums of money, but the House has voted over the past five years very nearly £10,000 million to the defence Services. It is quite a bit. One would have thought that one could have got a few new three-tonners out of that sum. It is very odd if sums of that order of magnitude have been spent and these elementary pieces of equipment have become as bad as this official Report says they are. It must have a profound effect not only on recruiting, with which the Grigg Report was immediately concerned, but on the whole morale of the Services when they are operating equipment of this sort. We should like to hear how this happened, why it has happened and, above all, what it is intended to be done about it.
It seems to me that there must have been here some profound error in proportion. Minds must have been filled with the music of the future in the way of nuclear warfare rockets and all the rest, which are very important no doubt. It seems to me that there has been real neglect here of basic equipment for the Army which is really important and which would not have taken many of these millions of pounds to make adequate. It seems intolerable that when an official committee makes strictures of this kind the House should pass the matter by without searching inquiry and some satisfactory answer. If no satisfactory answer can be given, I think that the House and the country generally would be very justified in calling sharply to account those who are responsible.
I can go on from that to many points which are less controversial. There are points on pensions both for men and relatives on which. I think, the Report was good and where the Government have accepted the recommendations. One can also say the same about the recommendations on disturbance; but I come now to the bigger subject of accommodation. The Secretary of State showed


that here the Report had touched a sore spot. He was at pains to defend the War Office in particular against the charge in the Report that much of the accommodation was still, in the words of the Report, scandalous.
We all know the difficulties of this question. All the things that the Secretary of State said have their validity, but, after all, he seemed to say that it was simply a shortage of money that had prevented his getting the new accommodation which could not be found within the compass of the sum found by the House. That is not the case at all with the basic married quarters of the Army. These are not sums which come out of annual Votes at all. These are sums given on loan. The War Office is, for this purpose, a housing authority. It finances its building in the same way as do other housing authorities, and it has simply not spent anything like the sums available to it by loan in recent years. Therefore, the whole plea that there was not the money to build this accommodation falls to the ground.
The real reason, I think, is another one. It is indecision as to where the Army wants its permanent accommodation. That is something which is understandable because it is very difficult in this transitional period in a disturbed world, as the Secretary of State said, to make up our minds where the permanent accommodation should go. But as the years go by, surely it has become time that the Government made up their mind where the married quarters must be and where the building programme can really go forward.
The Grigg Report says that in its opinion this is the most important single factor of all in recruiting. Surely, therefore, it is time that the Government showed very much more decision in this matter. I do not say that there should be more activity and concern. I am sure that they are active and are concerned, but it is decision that is so necessary.
One could speak about the education provisions, which I think are very important and on which the comments in the Grigg Report are good. I am not quite sure that the Report goes far enough, but its suggestions are important and good, and I know that the Government have adopted them. On the question

of the women's Services, I was disturbed only by one remark—that the Committee was told by the War Office, in contradistinction to the other two Services, that the War Office considered that recruiting more women to the W.R.A.C. would not release any men.
That seems to me to reveal an attitude which is altogether out-of-date. Surely there are enormous numbers of jobs. One has to think only of the vast clerical work of the Army in respect of which the recruitment of women would directly release men for other duties, and very likely for fighting duties. This smells of a stick-in-the-mud attitude on the part of the War Office as compared with the other two Services.
Finally, I should like to say a few words about what I think is the most difficult problem of all that the Grigg Report faced. That problem is the recruitment of officers. The Secretary of State said a good deal about it, and the Grigg Report—

The Minister of Defence (Mr. Duncan Sandys): Can the right hon. Gentleman clarify the point about women replacing men's jobs? I would like to answer it if I can, but I was not quite clear of the right hon. Gentleman's meaning.

Mr. Strachey: The quotation is from paragraph 218 of the Grigg Report, which states:
In the evidence which the War Office submitted to us, it was stated that an improvement in recruitment for the W.R.A.C. would not reduce the Army's requirement for men. This was in marked contrast to the evidence of other Service Departments, which made it clear that the recruiting of men and of women were complementary, at least in part.
That puts succinctly and clearly what I was attempting to say.
I want to say a word about officer recruitment. In the first place, it is a little ungenerous of the Government to say that the Grigg Report was in error about the number of officers that the Army needs. What the Grigg Committee said in its printed comment was that the Committee was incorrectly informed, and that is, no doubt, what happened. The Committee could not itself think up the number of cadets that were needed.

Mr. Soames: What I meant to say was that, regardless of where the information came from, the fact that the Grigg Committee began from a false premise meant


that many of the suppositions drawn subsequently by the Committee were not correct.

Mr. Strachey: Yes. Nevertheless, it is a pity that the Committee was incorrectly informed, as the written comments put it.
The Secretary of State would not, I am sure, deny that although the problem was exaggerated by the misinformation that the Committee was given, there is a real problem of officer recruiting. It is not quite as big a problem as the Committee supposed, but it certainly exists. It has two aspects. The right hon. Gentleman talked about the recruiting of officers from grammar school boys; the Grigg Committee dealt with this. The right hon. Gentleman's theme was that the War Office was only too happy to get the grammar school boys but that the trouble was that they were not coming forward in the proper numbers because boys in the grammar schools were not, as it were, Army-conscious, to the same extent. In paragraph 197 of the Report, however, we see that that is not the criticism which the Grigg Committee makes.
The Grigg Committee made the criticism of the failure rate in the examination for permanent commissions. The Committee said that the much higher rate of failure of the grammar school boy—and, incidentally, the North Country boy also—for commissions
indicates either that the boys who come from the South of England and from public schools are much better or, as seems more likely, that the selection machinery finds much more difficulty in assessing the quality of the boy from the North and the lad from the local grammar school.
That is the nature of the Committee's criticism. Nothing that the Secretary of State said met it in any way.

Mr. Soames: What is happening is that there is not the old tradition in many of the schools in the North for the boys to go into the Service. It is not the same standard of boy from the top of the school, so to speak, who comes forward for the Service. Therefore, the proportion of failures is higher.

Mr. E. G. Willis: Does "the North" include Scotland?

Mr. Strachey: Oh, yes. Scotland is north of the Trent. That, however, was not the view of the Grigg Committee. It is quite evident—

Mr. Soames: It is one or the other.

Mr. Strachey: Yes—as seems more likely, that
the selection machinery finds much more difficulty in assessing the quality of the boy from the North and the lad from the local grammar school.
There is still a very old-fashioned prejudice in this recruitment. The mess is still a club to a considerable extent. It is a pity that the Government and the party opposite, which expresses such intense concern for the grammar schools, do not seem, at least in the opinion of the Grigg Committee—this is not what I am saying, but is what the Grigg Committee said—to be able to assess the merits of the boys from them in the same way.

Brigadier O. L. Prior-Palmer: All that the right hon. Gentleman is saying is in complete contradiction to what has been said by headmasters from the North of England who have stayed and lived at and seen the working of the course. In their view, there is no foundation for the right hon. Gentleman's remarks. If they agree on that, surely the right hon. Gentleman should agree also.

Mr. Strachey: I would be the last man to put my unaided opinion against these reverend authorities, the headmasters. I am, however, quoting from the authoritative Grigg Committee, which included rather important and impartial people who would not be likely to have any prejudices which might be attributed to us on this side of the House. These were the comments of the Grigg Committee. Sir James Grigg, for example, said this. He may, of course, be utterly wrong, but it is a fairly important consideration that he puts before us.

Mr. Wigg: Those were the views not only of Sir James Grigg but of Sir Philip Morris, for example, one of our most distinguished educationists and certainly one of the greatest directors of education the country has had. He would not be party to such a suggestion if it were without foundation.

Mr. Strachey: Exactly. It was an authoritative Committee. The House cannot really say, "Pooh, they know nothing about it at all" and write it off at that. These are the Committee's


views, and they should be seriously considered.
Now, take the other and more important question which the Committee raised of the promotion of officers from the ranks. Again, we have the opinion of the Grigg Committee—this is not just my opinion; it is the Committee's considered view—in paragraph 166:
We believe it is imperative that the Army should adopt a more liberal attitude towards commissioning from the ranks than they have done in the past.
There, I would criticise the Grigg Report myself. It seems to me that the Grigg Committee expressed that in a rather pious sort of way without going into the question of what it really means. If we mean anything serious about a greater flow of men from the ranks to commissioned ranks in the Army, we must look again at what is called in the War Office the "two-ladders system", which exists in the Army today.
I know that there are exceptions, but broadly speaking there are two ladders of promotion. From private onwards a man puts his feet on one ladder or the other. One ladder goes into the commissioned ranks and the other goes into the non-commissioned ranks. A man starts on one ladder or the other, and as soon as he has got any considerable distance up his chosen ladder, if, for example, it is the non-commissioned ladder, it is very difficult indeed for him to move over to the commissioned ladder—there is very little intercommunication between the two.
If we were taking commissioning from the ranks seriously in the way the Grigg Report talks about it, although it makes very little in the way of concrete suggestions, that arrangement would have to be modified. It would be necessary to ensure that it was much more practicable for the man who had gone some little way up the non-commissioned ladder to move across. There would have to be a by-pass mechanism, as it were, by which he could come into commission. There would have to be commissioning, not for quartermasters and the like, for semiretired warrant officers, but for young corporals and sergeants. It would have to be much more possible for them to move across on to the commissioned ladder.

Mr. Soames: The right hon. Gentleman is making an interesting point. The best way of doing it, of course, is to be able to select the men that much younger at the age of 18, 19 or 20, when they can go to Sandhurst at much the same age as other lads go there and they will be there at the same time with their own generation and go on from there If we miss them then, we must do our best to pull in officer material later. It is much better to get the man much earlier when he has his first foot on the ladder rather than when he is half-way up.

Mr. Strachey: I know that is the War Office doctrine. It is the doctrine I found when I discussed these matters with my advisers at the War Office, but I am questioning that doctrine; I am not sure that it is altogether true. There are people who develop late, people who have had educational difficulties of one kind or another. There may be men who go some way up the non-commissioned ladder before they show their merits, and I do not think there is adequate possibility now for them to get commissioned rank.
I rather doubt whether, in our highly organised Army of today, there are the same opportunities as there used to be. For the purposes of this debate I looked up the career of one of the most famous rankers, perhaps, who ever served in the British Army, Sir William Robertson. I was interested to note that he was commissioned a full eleven years after joining the Army and after he had become a troop sergeant. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1888, having joined the Army in 1877, and went very nearly the whole way through the non-commissioned ranks to troop sergeant.
I do not think that is impossible today, but I do not think there is the same opportunity as there might have been in the rather more haphazard Army of those times. We have organised it very tightly now on the two-ladder system, and I am questioning whether it is right to believe, as we seem to do now, that we can spot the man who is commissionable material right at the start, before he has begun to go up the non-commissioned ladder. At any rate, I feel pretty sure that if the Grigg recommendation on ranker commissioning is to be taken seriously, that is what it means. It is either just a


pious aspiration or we must look at the system, the habit if you will, of promotion from the ranks which exists in the Army today.
These are some of the points which arise from the Report. There are many others, and I think they will be raised from all parts of the House. I will say in conclusion, therefore, that once again I think this is a most valuable Report. I hope that the recommendations which the Government have accepted will be put into action quickly. and I hope they will think again, and think very carefully, about those recommendations and that advice which clearly they have not really accepted so far and which they have hardly commented on.

5.43 p.m.

Brigadier Sir John Smyth: I can certainly join with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey) in his congratulation of the Grigg Committee. From my personal knowledge of Sir James Grigg, and bearing in mind his wide experience over the whole area covered by the Report, and also knowing his aptitude for setting out a case, the subject matter and great clarity of the Report is what we would have expected from him as chairman of the Advisory Committee on Recruiting, and I am sure that he was ably supported by the members of the Committee. I shall be mentioning one or two of the right hon. Gentleman's points during the course of my remarks.
My right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence also deserves congratulations for his imagination in setting up the Committee and for choosing Sir James Grigg and its members. I shall pick out some points which, I think, have an important bearing on their recommendations One of the most important, which had the most bearing on the supply of recruits, is the end of National Service. The Report states that it appears to the Committee that the required number of recruits, in accordance with my right hon. Friend's plan, will be achieved in 1963. Here again, I think that the Minister of Defence deserves congratulation for his courage in tackling the ending of National Service. It was not an easy decision to make, bearing in mind our great commitments. Many of us on both sides of the House thought that National Service should be brought to an end as early as possible. I

certainly did, but it was my right hon. Friend who took the bull by the horns and did it.
It was the confidence my right hon. Friend gave the embryo recruits that he would achieve his object which persuaded them to join in such satisfactory numbers. I know very well, as I think do most hon. Members, that the youth of today is not keen on joining a hybrid defence force; that is to say, one composed half of Regular long-service men and half of National Service men. We all realise that in the event of a national emergency we should have to resort to National Service again, but my right hon. Friend's confidence in achieving his object had a great deal to do with the result.
In its Report the Committee states that it is not its job to say whether the figure of 375,000 men is the right one and is sufficient or not. This is one of those imponderables. Defence is not an exact science any more than is medicine, and it is impossible to argue how many Regular long-service men could do the job which was done by a mixed defence force of long-service men and National Service men. The Report states, quite rightly, that
The task of maintaining all voluntary forces of the postulated level will be no light one; it might become impossible if reforms worth undertaking on their merits are not implemented.
Then the Report brings out the point which the Committee thinks, and I agree, is the most important of all, the short career. The Report states:
This is the biggest single cause of the great difficulty which the Services, and particularly the Army, are now experiencing in attracting a sufficient entry of officers of the right quality.
Today, we have not got what used to be called the officer class, namely, people with private means who can afford to stay in the Army for a few years and then make a career in civil life with their private means to back them up.
I am sure that until we can go further than we are doing now, and we contemplate doing, in offering the would-be recruit a whole life career, we shall not get officers of the quality and quantity we really want. The Civil Service, and every large employer in the country, today offers young men a whole life career. I realise all the great difficulties, but I


believe that we must go a great deal further in attempting to do that than we have done or than I think is immediately contemplated by the Government.
I have mentioned before that the factor I regard as all-important in attracting and keeping recruits in our new model Army is the status of the soldier. That runs through the first part of the Report, Part II, the background, and Part III, the willingness of men and women to join the forces. The question is: do we consider that the task of keeping the peace in this very dangerous modern world is second to none and that the men and women who volunteer for it deserve the thanks and support of a grateful nation? Do we mean to cherish them in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, for richer or poorer?
That is the sort of question that people, and particularly parents, will be asking themselves when they advise recruits to join the forces. For example, will we give them our full support in an unpleasant type of duty like the job that they are performing in Cyprus at the moment? For the soldier, duties in aid of the civil power constitute the most unenviable task that he can ever be called upon to perform.
I had the misfortune to be called upon to do it several times during my service in circumstances where casualties were very much higher than in Cyprus, but never, I think, in such difficult circumstances as our troops are facing in Cyprus today. I think that our troops there can be in no doubt that they are getting the full support of the House and the country in their very difficult task.
How right the Report is when it says that it is the parents and the families who have the paramount influence on whether a young man should join the forces today. The parents, the wives and the families survey the form over a very wide field, as, I think, most of us would agree. It is a matter of current thinking about the forces and their place in society which counts when it comes to getting recruits.
I was interested when my right hon. Friend said in his speech that every aspect of life can be an encouragement or a deterrent to recruiting. I should like to mention one or two aspects. The Report says that
the pay of both officers and other ranks represents a reasonable equivalence with civil remuneration.

I believe that that is true of the pay and emoluments as they exist at present. The Report then recommends that there should be an automatic biennial review of pay and pensions. I want to say a word about this because I think that that recommendation and its reception by my right hon. Friend has been rather distorted, first, by the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) at Question Time, the other day, and today by the right hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey).
Asking a supplementary question, the hon. Member for Dudley said that
the idea has been sold to the public that the rates of pay and pensions are to be linked with the cost of living"—[OFFICIAL. REPORT, 19th November, 1958; Vol. 595, c. 1121]
and accused the Government of sharp practice in their presentation of this case. I do not think that there was any excuse for that at all.

Mr. Wigg: My charge on that occasion was not against the Minister of Defence. It was against the Minister of Health, who was trying to edge away from an undertaking which the Government had clearly accepted.

Sir J. Smyth: Anyway, the right hon. Member for Dundee, West has referred to it again and has attacked the Government on the same point. We have never accepted the principle of directly linking pensions or pay with the cost of living. I have always been seized of the wisdom of the right hon. Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) on this point. I have quoted it many times, and I have heard him quote it many times since he introduced the Industrial Pensions Scheme, in 1946. I will read what he said, because I think what a Minister says in office when he bears responsibility is often a great deal more important than what he says he will do when he does not bear responsibility. The right hon. Gentleman said:
We are definitely of the view that it is undesirable, as well as impracticable, to have automatic adjustment. This method of pegging benefits to a specific cost of living and adjusting them automatically was tried at the end of the last war in war pensions, and broke down the first time it came to be applied. We are convinced, after examination, that it will break down again."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th February, 1946; Vol. 418, c. 1741.]
That was the right hon. Gentleman's view then, and I am sure that if he had to implement it again today he would agree with those words—

Mr. Wigg: Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman read the recommendation of the Grigg Committee that Service men's pensions should be reviewed biennially, to take into account movements in civilian earnings? The Government's undertaking is clear. The Government agree that Service pay and pensions should be reviewed regularly at intervals of not more than two years. The catch—I am sure the hon. and gallant Gentleman will see it—is this, that when the troops read that there will be a review if civilian pay has moved up they will think they will be paid more. The Government do not mean anything of the kind. What they mean is that there will be a review.

Sir J. Smyth: I hope I may prove my point. The right hon. Member for Llanelly mentioned particularly war pensions. In 1946, he referred to the experience of war pensions. It would have been a very good thing if he had done with regard to war pensions what my right hon. Friend has done about Service pensions, and said that he would review them every two years.
What happened over war pensions under the Labour Government was completely catastrophic. After they had raised the basic pension by 5s., in 1946, there was no review and no increase right up to 1951, when the Labour Government went out of office; and by that time the value of the war disabled pension had fallen from 45s. to 35s.
On the other hand, the Conservative Government had an immediate review, and in our first Budget we raised the war pension immediately by 10s., and we have had two subsequent reviews in exactly the same way as my right hon. Friend has guaranteed to do with Service pensions. Therefore, I think that the action of this Government in reviewing the war disability pension, which was not done by their predecessors, will give confidence to the Services that the Minister of Defence and the Government mean what they say and are to review Service pensions biennially.
As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War said, almost everything that comes before the public, and is influenced by public opinion, affects recruiting. I want briefly to mention one thing of which the newspapers were rather full this morning. My friend, Mrs. Odette

Hallowes, who is a member of my V.C. and G.C. Association committee, is naturally considerably disturbed by the criticism that has appeared in the Press over the last few days about her actions and those of Peter Churchill during the last war in the Special Operations Branch. It is extremely difficult for her, personally knowing the difficulty, secrecy and delicacy of these matters, to give a full explanation. There is no need for such people to explain, or make excuses for, the great gallantry they showed, for which they received very high decorations. However, she feels that it would be unfair on other gallant people who were concerned if she were called upon to explain matters which have been veiled in secrecy until now.
I hope that the Government will accept responsibility and give a reply on behalf of these extremely gallant people who went through all sorts of terrible hardships. Some received high decorations, but many were killed and we know nothing more about them. I shall certainly refer to the subject again on a more suitable occasion, but I wanted merely to mention it now.
The Report mentions pensions for retired officers and officers' widows, especially those officers who retired immediately after the two world wars, and their widows. The Report says:
The lot of these servants of the Crown is indeed unenviable.
They retired early with very small pensions which have been subject to inflation over a number of years. It goes on:
Many of them belong to families with a long history of service in the Armed Forces … their present plight is not much of a recommendation to their sons and grandsons who maintain the family tradition.
I shall not refer to this matter in any detail. It was discussed in another place in detail recently and there have been many Questions about it here. Other hon. Members may mention it today.
There are comparatively few of these officers and widows. Why so many of them still recommend young people to go into the forces beats me. The Minister of Defence was asked about this matter by the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) last Wednesday, and was at pains to point out that we are treating these men and widows strictly in accordance with the contracts made with them.


Of course, he was absolutely right. There was no obligation on the Labour Government to do anything for these people beyond what they did—absolutely nothing.
There is no obligation on the present Government to go beyond the very modest pension increases and the reliefs in Income Tax which have been given. Nevertheless, the plight of some of these people is a nasty canker on the body politic. Time will deal with it, because these people are dying off rapidly, but none of us can feel proud or happy about the situation.
There is another class of person—the number is not so great as with retired officers—which I want to mention again. They are the "very willing horses," the Service men who continue to serve, who get knocked about and who come up asking for more. Finally, nature rebels and they become seriously ill and ask for a pension, and then find that they do not have sufficient proof that their condition is due to the hardships they suffered on active service. I said in July that this constitutes a gap in our war pensions scheme, a gap to which the Government should pay attention.
I want briefly to quote one case, although I will not mention the officer concerned by name. He is well known to most hon. Members and to many others. He has given me details of his case, but for obvious reasons he does not want his name mentioned. He won the V.C. early in the First World War. During that process, as happened with most such cases, he was badly knocked about. He later went into the first gas attack with the Canadians at Y pres in April, 1915—and that was not a very healthy thing to do, as I know. He finished the war in rather a bad way, but between the wars he recovered.
Although he did not need to do so, he volunteered in the Second World War and was sent out to a very onerous job in North Africa, where he got pleurisy, pneumonia and shingles. Finally, he was absolutely smashed by an American lorry which ran into his car. His spine was injured and he has to spend the rest of his life in a strait-jacket. From time to time, he has blackouts, which I have seen.
The other day he had a very bad heart attack, which almost finished him. I

said, "If you recover from this, you must put your feet up and take it easy. I am sure that your disability pension will be increased and you will not be so badly off." To my surprise, and to his even greater surprise, the medical board found that his condition had nothing to do with his frightful experiences and with the battering which he had in two world wars. I can only quote the old jingle:
Look where he's been,
Look what he's seen,
Give him his pension, and
God save the Queen.
That type of man deserves our sympathy and support.
A New Zealand member of my V.C. and G.C. Association said on his return to New Zealand recently that several British V.C.s were right down on the breadline. He also said—and it was widely quoted in the Press and mentioned in the New Zealand Parliament—that the British people treated their V.C.s more meanly than did any other nation in the Commonwealth. I strongly refute both accusations. We do not have Service men who are right on the breadline. That might have been so in 1929. At the V.C. reunion of that year there were many men who were in a bad way. That is not the case today, although these men are not an affluent class by any means. Some have suffered hardship and we have done what we can to help them, but to say that they are on the breadline is a gross exaggeration.
In the other accusation, I want to refer to the V.C. allowance, a matter which I have never raised before, but which has been mentioned several times in the House recently. The allowance used to be £10 a year, but we have increased it to 6s. 11d, a week. It can be given only to other ranks. In addition, there is an annuity of up to £75, but that is subject to a means test and a needs test. To obtain it, holders of the V.C. have to be over 60, invalided out of the Services, permanently incapacitated and, by reason of age and infirmity, permanently unable to work. Unless one fulfils all those conditions, one cannot even apply for the allowance. What is mean is that if the disability increases and the disability pension is raised, that amount is docked from the annuity.
I should like to end where I began, by congratulating the Grigg Committee on the production of its Report, and I


should also like to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence for setting up the Committee and so promptly dealing with its Report and deciding to implement a lot of its recommendations. I feel, however, as I have said before, that the success of our recruiting scheme over a long term depends on the status that we give to the personnel, the men and women who will do the work in our defence forces of the future.

6.1 p.m.

Mr. George Chetwynd: I am very glad to be able to follow the hon. and gallant Member for Norwood (Sir J. Smyth), not only because of his very distinguished career in the Services, but also because he happens to be my own Member of Parliament, though not, I should say, with my personal assistance.
I agree with very much of what the hon. and gallant Gentleman said, particularly in his closing remarks, but I think he was a little unfair to the Labour Government in its attitude towards disabled war pensioners. It was the Labour Government from 1945 onwards which revolutionised the whole outlook of the Ministry of Pensions towards the war pensioners. It made tremendous efforts by means of special allowances and so on to raise their standard of living, and I think that that ought to be acknowledged.

Sir J. Smyth: I have mentioned that point on every occasion on which I have talked about war pensioners, and I give them the fullest credit for that. I should also like to say that my predecessors in the Ministry of Pensions during the Labour Government did everything they possibly could to get a rise in the basic pension, but the trouble was that the economic situation of the country was in such a mess that the Chancellor could not implement it.

Mr. Chetwynd: We have the Chancellor of those days with us and he could say what he thought about it. I am sure that we went to the absolute limit in doing what we could to discharge our duty to the disabled ex-Service man.
I welcome this Report, and I feel that the Government are taking it seriously, as I am sure they are, by the ready way in which they have responded to many of its proposals. As I see it, their effects will be two-fold. First of all, there is the

decision to abolish National Service at the given time as an actual fact, and that there is to be no going back on that. I think it would be disastrous if they were not to make it absolutely clear that National Service is coming to an end.
The second one, which goes with it, concerns the commitments which the forces will have to carry out, and whether they can be carried out by the all-Regular force which is envisaged by the end of 1962. Again, that is very important, because if we were not sure that we could meet our commitments we should have to reconsider our whole attitude towards the continuance of National Service. The Committee's Report says:
We have related our task specifically to the Government's present plan of bringing National Service to an end by December, 1962, and relying thereafter on regular forces totalling about 375.000 men.
Later on, in the same paragraph, the Committee states:
It is not, of course, for us to say whether the figure of 375,000 is the right one.
It is the Government's duty to say whether 375,000 is the right figure, and whether they think an Army of 165,000, for instance, will be sufficient to meet the many commitments it will have to carry out. There has been argument and debate whether this figure was high enough. I personally might be willing to take a chance on that figure meeting the commitments which we have.
The question then arises, if there is a surplus over this figure, what the Government intend to do, and whether they would allow the figure to go higher than 375,000. In other words, is the figure of 375,000 to be a ceiling, or can it be exceeded if recruits come along in sufficient numbers? The Secretary of State for War in his speech mentioned a significant phrase, as I think, that we would achieve our target if the present trend continues. The difficulty with recruiting is that we cannot forecast sufficiently far ahead to plot any real trends.
Previous experience has been that recruiting goes in fits and starts—that we have a bulge, then a decline, then another bulge and so on. At the moment, we seem to be coming towards the end of an upsurge in recruiting, because we may have drained the adequate pool of people who are willing to consider Regular recruitment to the forces at this time. It may be that two or three years will elapse


before we again have an adequately-sized pool from which we get considerable recruits.
That brings me to the argument which we have had about Appendix A, which seeks to set out the field of possible recruitment for the Armed Forces. I am absolutely staggered by the argument in this Appendix that one in three of the available manpower will be necessary if we are to reach our target. To my mind, that seems to be an absolutely impossible task. To think for one moment that one man in three, on reaching the age of 18 will opt deliberately to make Regular service his career seems to me to be quite unreal, and I am sure that we ought to have some explanation of this. Either the basis of the calculation is wrong, or the alternative is that the Government are too optimistic about the numbers they hope to get. We ought to have an answer on that point.
I think that there is probably some confusion in the minds of the people who drew up that Appendix whether those who are written off, as being students, apprentices or unfit in some way or other, wish to go into the Regular Forces. I can well imagine that there may be quite a fair number of apprentices who, when they have finished their training and apprenticeships, might well wish to make the Regular Army their careers. I can well imagine that there are numbers of people attending higher education who at the same time might wish to go into the forces, but these groups are not really mutually exclusive.
The other figure about which we ought to know something is that indicating that 25 per cent. of the available manpower is unavailable for the Armed Forces because of medical unfitness. It seems to me to indicate an exceedingly exacting and high standard of fitness for the Armed Forces, if, automatically, we have to write off a quarter of the population as unfit. I do not think that can be a true reflection of the physical state of the nation. With the National Health Service at work for ten years now, with all the welfare services and so on, I am convinced that that is very much an exaggeration of the fitness position.
Another figure which we ought to have explained is that of the 15 per cent. Un-acceptable to the Services. On what

grounds are they unacceptable? Because they are bad types, or do not fit in? It seems to me to be a ridiculously high figure to put on the number of people who are unacceptable for the Services.
So we find that, in any given year, of the 18-year olds who might be considering Regular Service, 64 per cent. are automatically excluded from the start, and 36 per cent. are left to be called upon. Of the 126,000 available each year, 42,000 will be available for Service requirements, and it seems to me that, on this one-in-three proportion, if the Services are to get the share they want, other vital services will have to be starved of men. Therefore, this figure of one in three is, to my mind, not only impossible of achievement, but is also undesirable on both social and economic grounds. If we are taking one in three of the fit people, we are leaving to ordinary civilian industry, employment and use unfit people who are not so valuable to us, and that, again, on social grounds cannot be justified. The Government must face the implications of this figure and give us a much more satisfactory explanation than we have had so far.
The other point involved in the question of whether we shall reach the target is that although we may get an overall approximation to the target there will nevertheless be gaps in the specialised services. The Government mentioned a number of technical services which may be short of the required numbers. In a modern force it is these specialised services which will make the machine go round and give it its cohesion and strength.
Two ways of dealing with this point are put forward. The first is that a sectional approach should be made and that special payments should be made for special skills in individual cases. The Government say that we should try to get an overall increase above what we want, and that that will take care of the places where there are likely to be shortages. The Government believe that over-recruitment will provide some magical way of getting people to fall into the specialist posts which must be filled. I do not think that that will happen. We shall probably get the right number of unskilled people, but not of skilled people. I would favour additional pay for skill, in order to attract the kind of person we want.
The Report says that there are shortages in the Medical Corps, the Ordnance Corps, and the Signals and Education Branches. All those services could be run in common, to serve the Air Force and the Army. Where organisation would permit it, I can see no reason why an R.A.M.C. man should not deal with sick people from the Air Force, or why we should not have a common Signals Branch or Ordnance Service. If we moved along those lines we might be able to rationalise the manpower situation in order to obtain the best use from the available people.
I now touch upon a matter which could affect the whole future of our Armed Forces, namely, the recruitment of officers. The Report reveals a very serious situation. It shows that the bulk of officer recruitment is on a very narrow basis. When, in the outside world, we are moving towards a system of society which is more equal, it is quite wrong that in the forces we should be moving, if at all, in the opposite direction. The figure of entrants to Sandhurst proves this. Twenty-one of the public schools send one-third of the entries, whereas 969 other schools send two-thirds. The public schools, in total, send 67 per cent., and the others send 33 per cent. Bearing in mind the fact that the public schools represent only a very small fraction of the available people, we see that a bias is applied in the matter of officer recruitment.
I am convinced that we must make more use not only of the grammar schools but of the secondary modern schools. I can see no reason why we should not tap the sources of good leadership material which exist in secondary schools of all kinds. It is not necessary to have the highest academic qualifications in order to be an officer; indeed, when I think of some of the officers in this House I wonder how they got there at all. It is not necessary to have high academic qualifications; what is needed is the power of leadership, understanding aid fitness, and those things are not the sole preserve either of the public schools or the few grammar schools who help out.

Brigadier Prior-Palmer: I know what the hon. Member is getting at, but he is barking up the wrong tree. He is barking up the Sandhurst tree.

Mr. Chetwynd: Yes.

Brigadier Prior-Palmer: That is not the point. The Sandhurst examination is a written one There is no interview, and it is purely a question of obtaining the requisite number of marks. Whether that is the right or wrong procedure is another matter. The point is that it is from those schools that more people go in for the examination. The problem is to get the secondary schools to enter for the examination. If the hon. Member had been talking about Westbury he would be barking up the right tree, but in the case of Sandhurst there is a written examination, and the problem is to get enough people to go in for it.

Mr. Chetwynd: I was dealing with the case of entries, in Appendix "E". I now turn to Appendix "F", which is a most important one, and which further proves my point. It shows that there is a bias against the grammar schools and, among the grammar schools, a strong bias against candidates from the North. We have tried to obtain an explanation of this situation, but it has not been forthcoming.
The figures given by my right hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey) were correct. It is not a question of their not having come forward in sufficient numbers; the fact is that the number of failures among those coming forward is much higher in the case of grammar schools, and much higher still in the case of the northern grammar schools. Sixty-one per cent, of the candidates came from public schools and 39 from other schools, but whereas only 63 per cent. of the public school candidates failed, 83 per cent. of the candidates from other schools failed.
I do not know what standards are being asked, but they must be tremendously high. They may be too high. Southern grammar schools send 68 per cent. as compared with northern grammar schools' 32 per cent., of the total grammar school entrants, but whereas 66 per cent. from the southern schools fail, 82 per cent. of those from the northern schools fail. That seems to bear out the argument that there is a bias against people from the north. I suggest that the more soft-spoken and sophisticated southerner has a better prospect than the more vital but perhaps less polished candidate from the North.
I am also convinced that accent is a determining factor in selection, and also that the question of the candidate's


father's job helps. Another factor is the kind of game played. The question whether one has played with a round ball or an oval one is taken into account. It is no good saying that the grammar school people from the North are not coming forward. If they are not, it is because of the instinctive feeling they have that there is a bias against them.
I hope that we may be given some details about the background of the people who sit upon the selection board. I want to know where they come from. I suggest that there should not be merely one board sitting in London, or wherever it is, but that others should be set up in Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle or Scotland. We should then make the best of the material we have.

Mr. F. A. Burden: I am sure that the hon. Member does not wish to exaggerate, but if his argument is correct I would point out that just as many northerners as southerners play football with an oval ball.

Mr. Chetwynd: The bulk of the people who get into the commissioned ranks play rugger rather than soccer. That is a pretty good indication. We must change out attitude towards officer recruitment. I can see no reason why we should take this exclusive line when in the war years and immediately afterwards it was very much easier to move directly from the ranks into the commissioned ranks. We could go back to that system with advantage. I am convinced that a man will make a much better officer if he has served in the ranks, not as a potential officer but as an ordinary soldier.
I had intended to deal at some length with the question of equipment, but that matter has been stressed already. I will merely comment that the response of the Government has been puerile. Their answer to the criticism in the Grigg Report about equipment is,
The Government fully recognise the importance of good equipment.
They do not say a single word about what they propose to do. After we have spent £10,000 million on the Armed Forces in the last seven years, it is an absolute scandal that a Report such as the Grigg Committee make should be made at all. Our troops abroad find themselves at a

grave disadvantage regarding equipment when compared, for example, with the new West German forces. Many years ago we set out to issue our forces with a personal automatic weapon. So far there are very few of these weapons. I understand that every German soldier has an F.N. rifle. How many of our troops have been issued with modern equipment? These things have a big influence on the morale of the Services and on recruiting prospects.
I wish to say a word about uniforms and to direct my remarks particularly to the Army, which is undoubtedly the "Cinderella" of our forces in this respect, not only when compared with other branches of the Armed Services in this country, but when compared with continental troops. The kitbag and the groundsheet mark the lack of esteem in which we hold our soldiers, and I am glad that at last the Government are making a move, however slowly, to equip our forces with a holdall to replace the kitbag and a mackintosh instead of a groundsheet. The groundsheet is the most inefficient piece of clothing ever devised. The rain comes in at the top and leaks out at the bottom on to the knees of the wearer.
In considering the question of recruitment, we should take into account the climate of opinion in this country. The hard fact is that the British people are not interested in a Regular Army. It is a basic tradition in this country that we do not pay sufficient attention to the Army and make no effort to see that our Army is properly looked after and respected. We accept a Regular Army as an unfortunate necessity and try to keep it in the background as much as possible. There is this huge force of public inertia to contend with, and stupid incidents occurring in Army camps, like parading men and marching them to watch a football match or a sensational court-martial case, may undo the good work of many years. I ask for far better public relations so that the case for the Armed Forces can be properly presented.
In my opinion, the real problem is bound up with the question of pay and the restrictions imposed upon the personal liberty of our troops. As compensation for these restrictions, men in the forces should receive more than the pay given to their counterparts in civil life. The


matter may be expressed in the one word "dignity," and our troops have not sufficient dignity. The idea that we should get rid of military police at railway stations and so on ought to be pursued. The biggest bugbear to many private soldiers is the possibility of being accosted by a military policeman. Many of them will go miles out of their way rather than risk being asked for their pass by a military policeman. If a man is walking out with his wife or girl friend it is a great indignity to be stopped and asked stupid, pettifogging questions by military police.
When a soldier is off duty and away from his barracks, I contend that he should be completely off duty and enjoy the same rights and privileges as a civilian. The soldier should enjoy more privacy in his barracks; there should be less herding together and less pushing around. The soldier should be given a better status in the community. If the War Office want a slogan for the future, I suggest it should be, "Every soldier can have a field marshal's memoirs in his new holdall."

6 35 p.m.

Vice-Admiral John Hughes Hallett: I agree with the observations made by the hon. Member for Stockton-on-Tees (Mr. Chetwynd), towards the close of his speech, about the unintentional harm which may be done by military policemen. Similar observations fell from my lips during the proceedings of the Select Committee which considered the Naval Discipline Act. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Stockton-on-Tees will receive the same volume of correspondence from the military police as I received after my remarks on that occasion, but if he does, he will find that they have a clear and forceful felicity of expression in their letters.
I wish to say a word about Recommendation (i) in the Grigg Report which has been accepted by the Government:
that there should be an automatic biennial review of pay
and pensions. Quite rightly, in my judgment, the Committee goes on to recommend that this review should be related to the
movements in civilian earnings.

Nevertheless, it is perfectly clear that what the Committee had in mind was the threat of further inflation.
The opening words of paragraph 101 of the Report state:
It would be better for everybody that Governments should be able and willing to put an end to inflation. But that this will be so is not yet assured beyond all doubt, and we therefore feel bound to recommend …
Nothing could be clearer. The Committee goes on to recommend that pensions should be reviewed at the same time on the ground, as it suggests, that pensions should be related to the rates of pay.
I concede that it was not in the minds of the members of the Grigg Committee that the existing pensions should be included. That is clear from paragraph 117 of the Report. But a careful study of paragraphs 204, 205 and 206, to which the reader is referred, shows that the Committee did not recommend against a review being extended to existing pensions. On the contrary, the Committee reached three clear conclusions. The first was that claims on military service pensions cannot be singled out from other public service pensioners as a whole. That is a statement of the obvious, if ever there was one. I think it a pity that a Committee of this nature should shelter behind that sort of statement; and, even more—I say this with great respect—that Ministers should occasionally shelter behind such a statement to dodge the issue.
It would he out of order in this debate to discuss the pensions of civilian pensioners as a whole. Because I am confining my remarks to Service pensioners, and because other speakers may do the same, it does not mean that other pensioners are excluded from our thoughts, but merely that we happen to be debating only Service pensions at present.
The second conclusion which the Committee reached was that there was no logical case for anything short of complete parity of pay and pension, irrespective of the date on which pensioners retired. I am inclined to agree with that point of view; but, at the same time, surely, in this life, most of the action that we take has to fall short of logical perfection. In a case such as this we have to accept compromise.
In its third conclusion, the Committee went on to show why that compromise


is necessary. It showed quite clearly that the expense of carrying out this logical conclusion would be excessive and unacceptable. There again, I entirely agree. From the wording of this part of the Report it seems that the real reason why the Committee does not make any specific recommendation in regard to existing scales of pension is that it doubted whether that would have sufficient bearing on recruiting, which was the subject with which it was concerned. It may be that young men are selfish and lack foresight, but I do not think that they are so selfish, or so lacking in foresight, that they are not affected and influenced by the plight of some of the older Service pensioners.
The point I want to underline is that there is nothing in the Report which amounts to an argument against extending the review to existing pensioners as well as to those who have yet to draw their pensions. For that reason I was disappointed when I asked the Minister of Defence a Question on that point last week and was met with a categorical refusal to agree to such a course. The object of my intervention today is to appeal to the Government to reconsider their interpretation of this part of the Report.
It is not a matter of great importance to people of my generation and those rather younger. We are fortunate enough to be included in the National Insurance scheme and we already have the assurance that that side of our retired earnings is to be subjected to a regular review, an assurance which is greatly fortified, as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Norwood (Sir J. Smyth) has pointed out, by the Government's record on such things as war pensions and the raising of the level of the national insurance pension. What possible justification can there be for denying to the older men, who never qualified under the National Insurance scheme, the solace of knowing that their pensions, too, will be subject to regular, formal review in the future?
It is all very well to say that the Government are determined to stabilise the currency. Let us pray that they may be successful, but so far no Government since the war have succeeded in doing so, except for comparatively short periods. The result is that for twelve years these

ageing officers and members of the ranks have been living through a nightmare of inflation. Can anyone doubt that that will remain a driving fear for them for the rest of their days?
What is meant by "stability"? It is often suggested that a mere depreciation of 2 per cent. per year would be acceptable, but let us apply that to an officer's pension. At that rate the officer will live to see a quarter of his pension's purchasing power disappear. The older people who retired are entitled to participate to some extent in the greater prosperity to which we all look forward. Does any hon. Member deny that principle? If we all accept it, it means that any future increase in pension rates for those about to retire should be accompanied by a proportionate increase in the existing pension rates.
That is what I urge now and shall go on urging. I am not in the least put off if I am told by the Grigg Committee that it is not logical and that it is a compromise. I think that it would be a fair compromise. All I am asking now is that the Government shall at least concede the principle that the older pension rates shall remain open to review.

6.45 p.m.

Mr. George Wigg: I want to pay my tribute to the work of Sir James Grigg and his colleagues for their production of a first-class Report, which removes the last excuse of any hon. Gentleman in any part of the House for not knowing the basic facts of life about service in the Armed Forces.
It is worth while mentioning that for the last six years the Labour Party has pressed over and over again for such an inquiry as has now been held. I have lent my voice in that direction. I wanted to get the facts established. The Grigg Committee says that many of these matters are questions of opinion. We cannot be sure what the answers are going to be, but at least we have established the basic facts.
Before I go on to the major part of my speech, I want to add my voice to that of the hon. and gallant Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett). I very much hope that the voice of the hon. and gallant Member and his colleagues in another place will move the Government, but, like him, I very much regretted the Answer he received to his


Question a week ago. Last night, when I was thinking over what to say today I looked back over some old papers. I found my grandfather's discharge papers. He joined the Rifle Brigade just one hundred years ago. His grandfather before him joined the Rifle Brigade about the time of its inception, away back in the time of Sir John Moore.
I learned from my mother of the hardships that she and my grandmother suffered. My grandfather was discharged after long service as an N.C.O. with a pittance of a pension of a few pennies a day. He died as the result of his service, and my grandmother died very shortly afterwards. My mother and her sisters lived as orphans and were supported by clarity. I, too, and other members of my family, joined the Armed Forces of the Crown, but although I have never forgotten that I was never treated with great generosity, I lend my voice to that of the hon. and gallant Gentleman but must declare my interest. I have, after twenty-seven years' service, the magnificent pension of 13s. 4d. a week. My gratuity on discharge was not the hundreds of pounds which is now given. When I left the Army just before the war I got a gratuity of £2. I had to commute part of my pension in order to buy a house.
I know that there are hundreds of men and women in the country whose rank was far more exalted and whose job far more responsible than mine, and they are left in penury. They were comrades of mine, and I am glad to speak for them now. I am particularly concerned about the ageing widows. It is a scandal that the Government can treat these ladies, mothers and widows of distinguished officers who gave their lives for their country, with the contempt now shown. There will be occasions, I hope, when some Government supporters may find it possible to go into the Lobby with some of us on a non-party basis and thus demonstrate their feelings on the matter. We ought to remember that it does not matter what Government: are in power; they always find an excuse for not behaving fairly to this class of person.
I would mention another class which has been treated absolutely scandalously, and that is the poor unfortunate men who, in both wars, were commissioned after service in the ranks. These people came back and received commissions, not because anybody wanted to commission

them very much but because the Government could not do without them. Then they retired on their N.C.O. and warrant-officer pensions. This class in the First World War was treated scandalously, and in the Second World War was not treated very much better.
This class of person was brought up with the conception that duty came first. The Government always relied upon that class and therefore could afford to treat it badly. This scandal has gone on for a long time and may go on for a long time yet.
I turn to the subject of recruiting. No one will be more happy than I shall be if the Government get their recruits. But I am not going to join the chorus in 1958 any more than I did in 1957 which says that everything is all right just because things have taken a temporary favourable turn. One of the advantages of this Report is that now we have the statistics set out. The figures some of us have mulled over and worked on hour after hour, day by day and year by year are here and cannot be denied. If any hon. Member takes the trouble to turn to Appendices A and B he can see the figures for recruiting from 1922 onwards. If I wanted to play a trick, I would ask hon. Members to look at the tables and ask them what were the two dates on which pay was reduced.
The history of the last thirty years has not been a history of successive increases, for there have been two reductions in pay. The astounding thing is that the reductions made no difference to recruiting. Pay was reduced on 26th October, 1925, and again in September, 1931, when it was reduced by 10 per cent. If we try to find a precise correlation between the recruiting figures and pay or the recruiting figures and the incidence of unemployment, we cannot find it. I am driven to the irresistible conclusion—I came to it a very long time ago—that in Great Britain there is a given number of young men who like service in the Armed Forces. Irrespective of the pay they join the Services and like it. If another £5,000 a year is given, of course more turn up at the recruitng offices. It is said by Sir James Grigg that if pay were reduced to 13d. a day the number of recruits would be fewer, but every pay increase that has been given, every alteration in the terms of service, has produced the same answer—a temporary increase and then the curve falls back to normal.
There is one qualification. I think there are forces at work which at present we do not begin to understand. Some time ago when the Grigg Committee was appointed I expressed my regret that the Minister of Defence did not find it possible to call on the distinguished services of Mr. Sidney Rogerson, who was nominated to the post of public relations officer at the War Office, without salary, by the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill). Mr. Rogerson has probed into this question as few have.
He wrote a letter which appeared in the Sunday Times yesterday calling attention to the fact that in 1902 and 1952 we had a very sharp rise in recruiting. He put the cause of the rises down to the fact that in the aftermath of a war public attention had been directed to the worth-whileness of soldiering. There was an idea in the minds, he said, of young men that they were doing a job which really mattered, so they came into the forces. In 1952, the second occasion in the century when we got more than 50,000 recruits in a year, the reason was tied up with Korea and an increase in the rates of pay and an alteration in the terms of service.
I do not pretend to know, and I wish I could be absolutely certain, what the answer to this problem is, but I am absolutely convinced that pay does not do the job. The Under-Secretary of State said the other night that we have got somewhere near to £10 a week, but we have not—even a three-star private has only about £5 15s. 6d. a week. If, in fact, pay does provide the answer, contrary to all the evidence produced by the Grigg Committee, the country is in for successive large dollops of pay increases. If the ceiling on expenditure is to remain unchanged—that is what the Government are trying to ensure—increases in personnel cost can come only at the expense of equipment. Thus if this were true it would be a dangerous doctrine about which to make a mistake, but I do not believe it is true. The argument which to my mind is conclusive is that when pay was quite savagely cut it produced no permanent effect on recruiting figures.
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the Adjournment debate I had last January. What I then did, and shall do again, was to assemble the figures and project those figures and the answer

which they give. Of course I agree that the recruiting figures have improved, but the right hon. Gentleman gives the game away. He says that in October they were better than in September and he makes the qualification, "in terms of man-years". Why is recruiting in terms of man-years? It is because the Government have done what I pleaded with them to do year after year. A Regular force is a long-term force and it means getting men on long-term engagements. We could not hope to get rid of National Service while service was based on three years. We have to get it back to somewhere around six years at the minimum. The Government have now taken that step and the increase in man-years recruited is the result.
We never heard from the Government benches the expression "man-years" until I talked about it so much that members of the Government muttered the words in their sleep. I am glad that they have listened to me and I ask them to listen again. We hear people say that once we get rid of National Service it will be easier to get recruits. I beg hon. Members again to be careful. It is a wonderful argument for the future, but what will happen as soon as we get rid of National Service? We shall slow down promotion. When I was a young soldier one had to do seven years before one dreamt of putting ones' nose inside the sergeants' mess, except on fatigues. That will happen again. A young man gets his G.C.E. and sees looming before him the prospect of technical training and, perhaps, study at a university. Then he is asked to remain a private for at least two years and a corporal for two more years—what will be his reaction? Has anybody thought of that? But it is one of the inevitable consequences of a wholly Regular army. There will be a barrier which will slow down promotion throughout the Services.
I am staggered about another matter which has escaped notice. We talk of the principle that all officers should come from the ranks. Of course, when they are all liable to National Service it is easy, but what will happen when we have an all-Regular force? I have not heard anyone on either side of the House say that they have ever thought of this problem. It opens a very big gap. Here I speak of members of my family. Two nephews of mine have given their


services to their country, having joined the Army as boys. They have both done well. One is a staff-sergeant after a comparatively short period of service.
They both went to Army schools—one went to Arborfield. I have not been to Arborfield recently, but I have a pretty good idea of what happens there and at similar places. They turn out first-class N.C.O.s and warrant officers—I would say the best N.C.O.s and warrant officers in the world. But in doing that they are cutting off a supply of potential officers and making it difficult for the young men who go there to attain commissioned rank. If any hon. Member thinks that that is the way to improve recruiting, he is living in a dream world, because I assure the House that the young men who have been led into the warrant officer-N.C.O. cul-de-sac are smart enough to see what has happened.
This is a very difficult problem. It will tax the ingenuity and the courage of many administrations because, even if the right hon. Gentleman is successful and these recruiting figures continue so that we get our one in three and then one in four, all we shall have done is to send the curve up, and six years from now it will be back in the trough again. For what we want is balance.
What we should really aim for in terms of manpower policy in the Army is recruitment of the right structure, based over a minimum period of twenty years, which will give the right outflow to balance the inflow. It has to be a balanced outflow and inflow not only in terms of numbers but in terms of types and functions.
Hon. Gentlemen come to this House and it is obvious from their speeches that they have never even gone to the Library and read the annual reports which we used to have on the Army up to 1938. How did we do this before the war? I am associating myself with it rather in the role of the sanitary squad than from taking part in considerations of high policy. It was done by the simple process of making every Regular soldier's primary engagement the same; irrespective of the arm of the Service which he joined, he joined for twelve years partly with the Colours and partly with the Reserve. In that way we got flexibility, flexibility in terms of the discharge of our current commitments and flexibility in terms of our

Reserve force to meet our mobilisation plan. It was on the basis of seven and five for the infantry, six and six for the cavalry, three and nine for the Guards, and eight and four for the R.A.S.C. So far the Secretary of State for War and the Minister of Defence have never even attempted to think about this problem.
Let me turn to one of the points made earlier concerning the Grigg Committee's Report. It says that we shall get the "teeth" arms. Please God we shall, Before the war we had 128 British Infantry battalions, and 118 Indian Infantry battalions, a total of 246 battalions. As a result of the present administration we shall have 49. That is what we are going to run down to. It may be argued that India was a liability; but it was also an asset. It paid its own bill and that for a considerable part of the British forces as well. Look where the Indian Army was stationed. It held Iraq and the Persian Gulf. If we wanted to reinforce Aden that was where the forces came from. But that is not so today. We now have 49 battalions, one-fifth of what we had before the war. Then we did not have four divisions in Germany, but we have that commitment now. If the Army is going to get its forces, that is not much to put in the shop window.
As I said earlier this afternoon, if we are going to contract out and base our Army on a figure of 165,000, we have to ask ourselves, "What are we going to do if we want to expand?" The day may come when that 165,000 will have to be expanded. How is it to be done? The burden of the contribution and the expansion will fall on the Royal Army Ordnance Corps.
The whole problem of the equipment of the Army on the present order of battle, and on an order of battle designed to meet certain eventualities which may be in the mind of the Government, is based on the expansion of a very limited number of Ordnance depôts at Branston, Bicester, Didcot, Donnington, Chilwell and other satellite depôts, and of course, the central ammunition depôts. They have been absorbing manpower and National Service manpower, for the R.A.O.C. cannot get enough Regulars. The men who serve in Ordnance depôts do not like it, for it is not a very glamorous job. It is not a job like


being outside Buckingham Palace being looked at by passing blondes and brunettes. These men are in places which are rather remote and where the work is very hard.
At the moment, the establishment figure for the R.A.O.C. is about 20,000 with 2,000 officers, and it will run down to 10,000 with about 1,000 officers. Of course, there is no other branch of the Service which has a higher National Service content than this particular arm. It is possible that if we undertake a full and vigorous use of civilianisation we may be able to do the job within the new establishment. Branston is wholly civilianised. We have to work out over a very long period a detailed, skilful and well-understood policy of civilianisation, because, if we do not, we shall find that C.S.C.A. and the other trade unions within the industrial and non-industrial sections of these establishments will be continuously at war with the War Office and with the people on the spot, who are much nearer to the core of the problem, for, of course, the civilians come in as young men and want to see their share of the promotion avenue right to the end of their career.
Equally, R.A.O.C. officers, the men called upon to go to the ends of the earth and do the unpleasant jobs, want to know what will happen to them. Common sense would dictate that the Government should work out a policy whereby the ordnance officer, at the end of his Service career, could take his place as a civilian. But let the Secretary of State try that in the present atmosphere brought about by contraction and the way he is carrying on now, and he will run into great trouble.
I have always held the view that over a given period it should be the object of our policy to get rid of National Service. I advocated in this House at Whitsuntide, 1952—when the House was even more empty than it is today—with my right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) when we tried to draw attention to the problem of getting rid of National Service. The hon. and gallant Member for Norwood (Sir J. Smyth) congratulated the Minister of Defence on his courage in getting rid of National Service. But in saying that, in a rather eulogistic way, I would ask him what the consequences will be.
Of course, the right hon. Gentleman chose the easy way out. He did not put the country's interest first. The proof of it is to be found in the first pages of the Grigg Committee's Report. As I reminded the Secretary of State for War, in an interruption earlier in his speech, at the first meeting of the Grigg Committee in December, 1957, they were told by the Deputy-Secretary of the Ministry of Defence that the Navy was all right, the Air Force was probably 10 per cent. down and the Army was not recruiting 50 per cent. of the recruits required. So when last December and before I was attacking the Government for their recruiting record, here was proof positive that I was right, and when the pay increase was given, all I said was, "We will wait; we will give it fifteen months to see how it works out." I am prepared to wait until the end of the fifteen months. I am as sure on this section of the Report as I was when the Committee was first set up what the answer will be. We are going to contract, and we shall have a gap. The gap will not be in the "teeth" arms; it will be in the Services. The test will come not in statistics nor in reports made to this House. The test will come when we ask British troops to go into action to carry out the tasks which the House lays upon them.
We found it in Jordan recently. We find the same thing in this Report when it speaks of the condition of equipment in Cyprus. We find it in conditions as they exist in Germany and as they exist in all parts of the world where British troops are stationed. The troops are under-strength. They are ill-equipped. They are without the backbone of services which would enable them to discharge their tasks. The responsibility will be borne by whatever Administration happens to sit on the Front Bench at the time.

Mr. Burden: There is one point in the hon. Gentleman's remarks which I do not understand. He said that in 1952 he first advocated the abolition of National Service. Now, he says that, in making the announcement that he will bring National Service to an end, my right hon. Friend has taken the easy way out against the best interests of the country. If that is so, why did the hon. Gentleman advocate it in 1952?

Mr. Wigg: The hon. Member has not followed very closely what I have said. In 1952, I and my right hon. Friend pointed out that we could not, in this country, maintain two years National Service once it was perfectly clear that no other country in the Commonwealth—Canada, particularly—would maintain the same obligation. We had to face the fact that we could not indefinitely sustain this level, if only for economic reasons.
I said in 1952, and I say it again now, that the first thing to do, if we wanted to get rid of National Service, was to get rid of the three-year engagement. The size of the Army would depend upon the number of men multiplied by the number of years for which they had engaged. The Minister of Defence decided to get rid of National Service before he had time to see the results of altering the terms of service. He gambled. It was then said, not only by me but by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carshalton (Mr. Head) also, that the thing to do would be this. The Minister should have said, "I am going to get rid of National Service. I shall alter the terms of service. The date on what I abolish National Service will depend upon the level of recruiting".
On the contrary, the Minister of Defence has fixed a date—in 1960, the last man in, and in 1962, the last man out—regardless of the consequences. I am pointing out what the consequences are. We could do it, but, in order to do it, we must spread the measures over a much longer period than has, in fact, been taken.
I come now to the other point, on which the right hon. Gentleman touched only slightly, about whether 375,000 are enough.

Mr. Soames: I wonder whether the hon. Member for Dudley will give us the benefit of his forecast this year. This time last year, he told us that, when the Grigg Committee reported, we should read that it was of opinion that we should not be able to recruit an Army of about 100,000. In fact, the Committee says that, in its opinion, we should be able to achieve 165,000. However, that was the hon. Gentleman's opinion a year ago. What would be his prognosis now, which we may remind him of next year?

Mr. Wigg: Certainly, I will answer that. A year ago, when the Grigg Committee was appointed, I gave a forecast based upon the recruiting figures of that month. When I had the Adjournment debate in January, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, I made a projection from what the current recruiting figures were. What the Committee says is that we shall get the numbers if the recruiting figures continue. If the recruiting figures, which have been running for the seven months of this year since continue, the right hon. Gentleman will, of course, get his recruits, but my point is that this rise now will follow the pattern of all past rises. It will level itself out, and my forecast now, like the forecast I gave last month, is that October will not be as good as September. I gather from the right hon. Gentleman's statement this afternoon that it is not.
In terms of the next three years, the man-years do not matter. The men who are coming in for six years do not benefit the first three years. November will not be as good as October, December will not be as good as that. I repeat what I said in the last debate, that, in 1959, the Government will not have as good a recruiting figure as they have this year in September. That is as far as I will go at this stage. When the time comes, we shall see what happens. I was right in 1952, and I am confident that I shall be right again, for precisely the same reason, namely, that this is a flash in the pan such as has occurred after every pay increase, and the final result will be exactly the same.
I come now to the second half of the attack. The Grigg Committee says that it is not its job to say whether 375,000 men are enough. I venture to say that 375,000 is not enough. I should like to hear from the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War whether he thinks that 165,000 is sufficient for the Army, whether he is satisfied with an order of battle at the moment based upon such a figure. He asked me a question. Perhaps he will now be good enough to give his answer to that question. Would he be satisfied with an order of battle based on 165,000 at the present time?

Mr. Soames: That is not within the Grigg Report.

Mr. Wigg: Is the right hon. Gentleman now saying that he is recruiting a force which he knows is too small? That is what he is saying, if he does not answer that question. He knows as well as I do that 165,000 is not enough. He knows that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carshalton spoke the truth when he said that the first figure was 220,000; it was whittled down to 200,000, and the Minister of Defence then cut it down to 165,000, because that was the figure which his actuaries told him he might recruit. The country's target of 165,000 was based on no military assessment at all but upon the political convenience at the moment of the Minister of Defence and, I regret to say, apparently, of the present Secretary of State for War.
We have heard from the Secretary of State today about what is to happen to equipment in the future. What happens to equipment at the present time? He was responsible for two battalions of the Parachute Regiment going to Jordan. What were they armed with? I have kept my mouth shut until now on this subject, because I did not want to put the troops in jeopardy. They were sent there with F.N. rifles with a bore using 0·300 ammunition. Their automatic weapons were 0·303. Thus their automatics had a bore different from that of their rifles. When they were sent in, was there any expectation of their having to meet any effective resistance?
I thought that the right hon. Gentleman might get a little tough. I will get a little tough, too. When we left in July, 1957, only one year before, we left behind the following equipment in Jordan: 36 Valentine tanks; 49 Charioteers; 8 Cromwells; a considerable number of 40 mm. guns; 20 25-pounders; 14 17-pounders; 420 pistols; 1,080 Sten guns; 8,700 rifles; 320 load carrying vehicles and large quantities of ammunition. We sent British troops in to meet that equipment without even a British effective antitank weapon. That is the responsibility of the Government Front Bench and the whole House of Commons which sent two battalions to Jordan.
Why only two battalions? Hon. Members should read the report of the Suez operation. We sent only two battalions because we had airlift for only two battalions. They went in, and they had to come out because we could not sustain them; we had not got the equip-

ment to maintain them. If the Secretary of State wishes to deny that, let him do so. I have not given these figures before, and he knows why I have not given them. But the troops are out now. That was the equipment that we left behind in July, 1957. We sent two battalions in. What happened then has had repercussions throughout the Middle East. Hon. Members opposite may smile, but the truth about these military realities is known in Khartoum, Bagdad, throughout the East, that we are undertaking military commitments far beyond our strength to sustain them. We are weaker this year than we were last year. We shall be weaker next year, and weaker still the year after.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey) drew attention to the figures in the Grigg Report on the expenditure on personnel costs. He said that he could not understand why the expenditure on equipment was only half what it was before. There is no mystery about this. This is a direct consequence of the Government's manpower policy. If for political reasons we fix the ceiling of our total expenditure, and we set about spending—and it amounts to £117 million a year more in terms of pay—more on uniform and on personnel costs, and if prices tend to rise, what is the answer? There is less money left to spend on equipment. There is no mystery about that.
But this is not the first time that this has happened. Hon. Members should read Field-Marshal Montgomery's book and see what he thought about the army that went into action in 1939. He said that it was a national shame, a national disgrace, that we should send an army as badly equipped as that. That followed years of Conservative administration, and it was done for precisely the same reason as it is done now. The truth is that the present forces are even worse equipped than were the forces in 1939. It is charitable to say of the right hon. Gentleman that he is so stupid that he does not know what he is saying when he says that it will be all right in 1963. How dare he say that? When we have got 25-pounder guns, how dare he say that we are going to have the Army equipped by 1963 with 105 mm. guns. Does he believe that?
What is the Government's policy on the introduction of the F.N. rifle? Is that based on military efficiency? If it were, it


could be pushed through in the quickest possible time. We could carry through the production and issue of that rifle in the shortest possible time. But the Government are taking the longest possible time. I have a list here. It is not secret; I asked the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor for it after I had visited the School of Infantry. I have a list of equipment which was on display at that school—some of the finest equipment which existed in the world. It consisted of prototypes, of signal equipment, bridging equipment, every kind of equipment, not issued. Why not?—because it is not convenient for the Government to provide the wherewithal. Yet the right hon. Gentleman comes here and says, "We are now entering into the equipment phase."
In Cyprus there are 3-ton vehicles twenty-five years old. Two Army vehicles are sent on each trip because the authorities are not sure whether one of them will arrive at its destination. That is what the Grigg Report says, and the right hon. Gentleman does not deny it. Equipment is out of date. Personnel weapons are out of date. We had not got an anti-tank weapon at Suez. We "pinched" the American 106 mm. anti-tank weapon. It was given us for use for N.A.T.O. purposes only, and only with the permission of the Supreme Allied Commander. It was stolen by the British administration and misused—pilferers, forgers, embezzlers; that is what they are. They took this equipment and used it for a purpose for which it was not given. We had a wonderful anti-tank weapon known as "B.A.T."—Battalion Anti-Tank. But at Suez the ammunition was no good. Now we have a "Mobat"—a modified B.A.T. Then the right hon. Gentleman says that by 1963 the equipment will be all right. I say to him: tell it to the marines. Do not come here and report that stuff.
I got a bit hot under the collar because of the right hon. Gentleman's evasive attitude and his attempts to play around with figures of which he knows the truth as well as I do. This is a problem to which, as I have said before, there is no easy answer. We will not get this equipment problem solved quickly any more than we got the manpower problem solved. It is a problem which can best be handled on an all-party basis. I have said that before, and I say it again. It

is essentially a long-term problem. This sort of inquiry of Sir James Grigg's ought to be extended into many other fields. There ought to be an inquiry into the functioning of the Ordnance depôt That is absolutely fundamental. This problem will not be put right by one administration, or by two. It will take a long time to get right.
I should like to see a Defence Board set up, something like the old Board of Education. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) looks up. I know it never met, and I would not care if this Defence Board never met either. It is the existence of such a board that matters—a board which would take some of these abstruse, technical problems out of the arena of an assembly such as this and come to a decision. We have the Cohen Committee which is not widely accepted, but this kind of approach might be accepted. I am very glad that Sir James Grigg has produced this objective Report. It has done one thing if nothing else. It has destroyed the alibi of those who talk nonsense about these things.
Having established the facts about recruiting, we can afford to wait and see who is right. The right hon. Gentleman will not crow over me in a year's time. I shall be the first to throw my hat in the air if I am proved wrong, this year or the year after. I shall be delighted. But what I am not going to do is to let the right hon. Gentleman get away with the idea that for purely political reasons—to put it at its best, for reasons of personal loyalty to the Minister of Defence—these figures at this stage can prove anything. I am not going to let him get away with the evasive answers that he has given this afternoon on the issue of equipment. To my mind, this is the fundamental point.
I do not think I can do better than close my speech by quoting the Government's reply to the Grigg Committee's recommendation on equipment, because it ought to take its place in history. Future generations of Parliamentarians ought to note this:

Equipment
271. "Adequate equipment is a pre-requisite of proper training, but some of the Army's present equipment is out-dated and grossly unsatisfactory. This appears to be the direct result of spending an increasing proportion of


Army Votes on personnel, and a decreasing proportion on production. In the long run, the Army cannot hope to get recruits unless it is an efficient and properly equipped force of which men can be proud.
The Government's comment is:
The Government fully recognise the importance of good equipment.

7.30 p.m.

Sir Eric Errington: I will not attempt to follow the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) in all the multifarious matters to which he has referred, but I would like specifically to deal with one matter that I consider to be important. First and foremost, it should be a matter of congratulation to the Grigg Commitee that in the short time of just under one year it has been able to produce such a comprehensive document dealing with the all-important matter of recruiting. Many of us will recognise in it the points that have been made on both sides of the House, many of which have been made more effective by the recommendations of the Grigg Report.
The point with which I desire to deal is not that of officers' pensions, although they are of considerable importance. I am pleased that the question of other ranks' pensions has been dealt with in the recommendations which have been made. It is satisfactory that some of the "ju-ju" words such as "immutability", "isolation" and "contributory principle", which have all been used, not only in documents dealing with pensions, but also in the words of Ministers, have all come in for considerable reconsideration by reason of the Grigg Report.
The immutability of pensions was dealt a fatal blow when the Pensions Increase Act, 1956, provided that there should be no means test for the increase of pensions. The idea, which has been referred to by one of my hon. Friends today, that the Armed Forces cannot be treated in isolation on these matters has been completely done away with because of the recognition, for the first time, that the amount of disturbance from which those in the Service suffer is something for which they should be adequately compensated.
It is very pleasing to those of us who consider these matters to hear from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that there is to be a serious and, I hope, early consideration of the question of early retirement. I am satisfied that many

are deterred from going into the Services because they realise that they may have to leave at a very early age.
Another matter that helps in dealing with the problems which I have in mind is the increase in the education allowances. I am also delighted that in its Report the Grigg Committee has dealt clearly and definitely with the contributory principle, which, it was said in the 1956 White Paper, would be the only way in which pensions subsequently could be increased. That is something that the Grigg Report describes as illogical and I am pleased to hear that the Government are abandoning that principle in the present proposed increase of pensions.
The matter to which I want particularly to refer is the forces' family pensions which are, in effect, the pensions of the widows. The Report uses the words "derisory" and "ludicrously low" concerning these pensions. It is, however, desirable that one should point out that in 1952 this pension for widows, which had remained unaltered for 100 years, was raised substantially. Subsequently, however, it was raised in 1956 by the ridiculously small amount of 5 per cent.
What is the position under the recommendations of the Grigg Report? Paragraph 119 states:
At the moment the Services have a noncontributory scheme whose benefits can only be described as derisory. For example, no one under the rank of staff-sergeant with less than 27 years' service qualifies, and the widow of a warrant officer … receives 13s. 7d. a week …
From the point of view of what other people think about the Armed Forces as good employers, the Report tells us that
it would indeed be almost preferable to pay no pension at all to widows unless the death of the husband were attributable to his Service.
Paragraph 120 goes on to say:
The Service Departments have put to us an agreed non-contributory scheme for the improvement of family pensions. This would give the widow of a serving officer or other rank one-third of the pension to which her husband would have been entitled had he been invalided, subject to certain minima.
That is dealt with in the recommendation in paragraph 255. It was agreed by the Government that other ranks' pensions should be increased.
The recommendation in paragraph 256 states:
Existing scales of family pension result in widows receiving ludicrously low payments. This is bad for recruiting, and we recommend … that future family pensions should be increased. …
The word "future" in this connotation seems to be completely illogical. The effects of these conditions, which have been referred to as "derisory" and "ludicrously low," are being felt now and are bad for recruiting. I cannot understand why the recommendation is made that only in the future should family pensions be increased.
In view of the language used by the Grigg Report one would expect that something would be done immediately, but even if it is not done that still does not answer the question: what does this paragraph mean? It continues:
… future family pensions should be increased to give widows one-third of the pension which the husband was drawing or (in the case of those still serving) the pension he would have drawn had he been invalided.
It is not clear whether widows of officers who retire before, and who die after 1st April, 1959, get any benefit from these proposals. Or is it correct that only widows of officers who retire subsequently to 1st April, 1959, benefit? In view of the many cases in which the documents relating to Service pensions are obscure, it would be valuable to have a statement from the Front Bench as to which of those two suppositions is correct. If the latter, then acceptance by the Government does nothing for existing widows. Incidentally, I would like to know the meaning of the expression:
… the pension he would have drawn had he been invalided.
The continuing blot on the forces' family pension is the case of the elderly widow whose husband did not have a chance to secure a State national pension, because 156 payments had to be made and this became possible only after 5th July, 1948. There are 9,500 widows in this position, eight out of every 10 of whom receive either £189 or less, and three out of every 10 of whom receive less than public assistance, while half of them are over 70 years of age.
I have a case of a comparatively young widow which ought to be known. This lady is the widow of a Regular lieutenant-colonel in the Army. Her husband died

recently while on the re-employed list, having retired from the active list in 1955 and having been taken on as a re-employed officer. Aged 44, she has a daughter aged 18, who is training to be a secretary. During her husband's period on the active list she was a successful colonel's wife and took a full part in Army welfare.
This lady rents a sparsely furnished flat in London, consisting of a bed-sitting room and a kitchenette. She shares this with her daughter, partitioning the room with a rug for privacy. The rent is £6 10s. a week. She and her daughter are both working in one of the large London stores as counterhands. She has an ordinary widow's pension from the War Office of £189 per annum, and because of it she is not eligible for any grant from the National Assistance Board, even if unemployed. Also, she is not eligible for the State widow's pension, even though her husband was a contributor since 5th July, 1948, because she was under the age of 50 when she became a widow, and she has no dependent child as her daughter is over 18 years of age.
Had this lady not been in receipt of an officer's pension of £189 per annum she might have received from the National Assistance Board as much as £247 per annum for as long as she was certified as unable to work or whilst looking for work, and registered as such with the Ministry of Labour.
It seems to me that there can be no justification for that class of case, and once it has been brought to the notice of the Government in the way it has been, through the Grigg Report and in this debate, I submit that it requires immediate attention and not future attention.
I will make one other point concerning the commutation of retired pay, on which I understand there are certain limitations. The first is that not more than 50 per cent. of the retired pay can be commuted and that £150 per annum of it must be left. This is subject to medical examination and provided that the person who desires to commute is over 40 years of ago. Yet the Report states, in paragraphs 120 and 256, that one-third of the pension which the husband was drawing shall be given to the widow.
I want to ask the Minister who is to reply to the debate to confirm that it is still open to officers to commute their


retired pay on the basis I have indicated. If it is not, this will be a further difficulty for the widow of a serving man. The reason is that often in the past a retired officer has taken advantage of the fact that he can commute a portion of his pension to ensure that his widow, will get a little more than the "derisory" sum to which I have referred. If, however, the effect of commutation on the new basis reduces the widow's payment by 50 per cent. it will be nothing like as much as it should be for her benefit.
I have tried to deal with the one point in the Grigg Report which I think is illogical. It has been accepted by the Government in terms which are not clear and definite. It has been accepted because the Government think that it is better not to deal with this problem at present, but just to pay the £4 million that ultimately will be payable for future widows. The amount involved in dealing with this matter, which the Grigg Report says is so bad for recruiting, would be negligible and it would also be a decreasing amount. I ask the Government to give most careful consideration to these elderly widows who are deserving of much better consideration than it appears they are likely to receive from the Government.

7.49 p.m.

Mr. E. G. Willis: It is interesting to notice that all the speakers from the other side of the House have devoted themselves to the question of pensions rather than to the question of recruitment. I agree at once that pensions contribute to recruitment. Certainly, it is obvious that the pensioners, who are out in the world again, in discussing with younger people the prospects offered by the Services, can do a great deal to assist recruiting.
I associate myself with the pleas which have been made on behalf of some of the older pensioners, who are undoubtedly being treated very shabbily. I do not accept the Grigg Committee's argument that this is part of a larger problem and that we must deal with the larger problem instead of singling out these people for attention. It is not right to say that we must not do something which is good because it is part of a larger problem which ought to be tackled. We ought to do something which is worth doing

whether or not we are able to tackle the larger problem.
A great deal has been said about the figures given in Appendix A of the Report of the Grigg Committee. A number of questions are begged by those figures. There is one question that I want to ask about the Appendix. I notice that paragraph 4 says:
The assessment of the Service requirement is on the basis of male other ranks only, and excludes re-entries, recruits drawn from outside Great Britain, and transfers from National Service. It is based upon a number of detailed assumptions about prolongation rates. Any fluctuation in these rates would materially affect the demand for recruits from civil life.
That is profoundly true, but I cannot find any indication of what the basic assumptions are, and I am interested in them. So are some of my hon. Friends who have taken part in the Navy Estimates debates, because we invariably raise the question of prolongation of service. I should have liked some indication of the basic assumptions.
The purpose of the Grigg Report is to try to create conditions in which it will be possible to bring about long-service forces, and one of the important factors is the question of re-engagement, to which the Committee addresses itself. If, in the Navy—I shall address my remarks mainly to the Navy—we could increase the present re-engagement rate of 407–45 per cent. to 60–65 per cent.—I do not think that is too high to aim at—there would be a considerable difference in the demand which the Navy would make from the civilian population for manpower at the age of 18. To what extent it would be affected I do not know, but I think that we might be given some information about it.
Turning to the more general questions discussed by the Committee, I was interested to notice that in paragraph 13 we are told that the shortage in the Navy is in the signals operating trades. I do not know whether that is altogether true. Is there not still a shortage in other technical branches? I understand that there has been such a shortage for many years, but there is no information about it. From my knowledge, I should have thought that that shortage still existed.
The Grigg Committee deals with a number of questions in relation to trying to meet that shortage by encouraging men to sign on to complete 22 years, and


I wish to refer to some of them. The Committee deals with the question of education, about which I do not wish to say very much, but one of the things with which it deals is resettlement, and it suggests that officers should be given the opportunity to gain professional qualifications or experience of industry. I observe that the Government will look at that recommendation with a view to implementing it.
Why should not the same facilitiees be provided for other ranks? Why should not ratings in the technical branches be given the same opportunities to equip themselves for the time when they leave the Service? Why should not artificers—the hon. Gentleman knows that I take an interest in them—be given the opportunity of training to take the Ministry of Transport certificates of the A. M. I. Mech. E. or the A.M.I.E.E.? I have seen a suggestion made—it appears to be a good one—that shortly after re-engaging, at a point in their lives when they can still learn fairly quickly and well, they should be given the opportunity to take courses of that character to equip themselves for civilian life later. I cannot understand why the Grigg Committee should have confined the recommendation solely to officers. It seems to me that the higher ranks of the lower deck at least should have been given the same facilities and opportunities.
The question of obtaining the men that we require is that of what has been called the three Ps—pay, promotion and pension. Pay does not cause much controversy. The main point raised by the Grigg Committee is the need for simplifying it so that people can understand it. Anyone who has tried to work out relative rates of pay knows how difficult it is. I once spent an afternoon with the Secretary of State for Air trying to compare the pay of a chief engine room artificer, first-class, with a number of years service with that of a warrant officer in the Royal Air Force or the Army. We spent about two hours at it, but still were unable to relate the rates of pay. It is exceedingly difficult to do so, and it is exceedingly difficult to find out precisely what a man gets at any point in his career. On the face of it there seems to be a case for simplification.
When one goes into it more deeply, however, it would appear to be a pity to

wipe out a number of small additional payments which are made for various qualifications, length of service, and so on, because they provide a man with something to which he can look forward. He thinks, "In another six months' time I shall get a certificate", or, "I shall have done a certain length of service and shall have another 6d. or 1s. a day." It is something to look forward to.
The question of pay itself is linked with the question of the structure. I am not satisfied that in the Navy we have yet dealt with this matter satisfactorily. I understand that there is a committee, which has been sitting for a considerable time, studying the lower deck structure. I have previously asked the Civil Lord how it is getting on with its deliberations, but to date we have heard nothing about it.
It seems to me to be important for this reason, that in the Navy the way is being cleared for a sensible structure to be provided throughout, a structure which might give the possibility of promotion throughout fairly freely to those able to take advantage of it. The General List for officers was necessary because, without it, it is exceedingly difficult for officers other than executive officers to reach the higher ranks in the Navy.
For instance, I understand that for ten or eleven years there has not been a single example of an ex-apprentice artificer reaching flag rank. I am not saying whether that is right or wrong, but if that applies generally to technical branches it is difficult to see how the best people will be attracted to the technical branches. This is not a problem affecting only the Services, since it also arises in civilian life. How is a technical man, on whom an undertaking depends, to reach the same levels as an executive officer can reach?
The General List clears the way to solving that difficulty, but whether the Admiralty will make it possible I do not know. However, whether a man is an electrician or anything else, he finds it extremely difficult to reach flag rank. I am sorry that the hon. and gallant Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett) is not present, but I am sure that he will not mind my saying, as someone recently said to me, that if the hon. and gallant Gentleman had been an engineer he would not have reached flag rank.
That may not be correct, but that is the general feeling. It has nothing to do with ability. The trouble is that the opportunities are not so readily available to technicians. This problem obtains in the other two Services and in civilian industry. Anyone who has studied this subject knows that the problem of how the technical man is to reach senior levels and receive awards similar to those of executive officers is widespread.
In addition to the introduction of the General List to the Navy, we have had reduction in the size of the force. I hope that that has enabled the Navy to become better balanced and to clear out some of the people who have been running around in the Admiralty for far too long, and to make way for sensible advancement. These things must be linked with a proper structure of the lower deck so that it can be possible for people of ability to travel up the ladder of promotion.
On previous occasions I have referred to the problem of those chief petty officers who have reached that rank before the end of their twelve years' service and who, therefore, have nothing to which they can look forward if they sign on for another ten years. That is a problem which must be considered in this matter of the structure of the lower deck, and I hope that the Admiralty will bear it in mind.
I was especially interested to read in the Grigg Report that the Admiralty put forward a scheme for pensions different from that of the other Services. I believe that the Admiralty suggestion was right. According to the Report, the Admiralty scheme was directly related to pay at the point of retirement. If it had been followed by all three Services, it would have cost £3 million in 1958–59 and £25 million a year ultimately.
The Admiralty has been considering this scheme for some time and I am sure that it is on the right lines. Pensions are as important a subject as pay. For men to stay on, especially when there is very little hope of promotion, pensions must be adequate. I was struck by the fact that the Grigg Committee went on to say that the Navy scheme was much more ambitious, for example, giving nearly £6 a week to a petty officer who left the Navy at 40 with twenty-two years' service and more than £6 10s. a week

to a chief petty officer of the same age and same service.
The Report went on to say:
We do not feel able to recommend increases of that order. The Admiralty's engagement structure is, however, somewhat different from that of the other two Services, and we do not regard it as absolutely essential that the pension schemes should be identical. That being so,—
and I did not think this a great concession—
we suggest that the Admiralty might be left free to devise a scheme of its own to suit the needs of the Royal Navy, provided that the cost is roughly the same as that of applying to the Royal Navy the scheme we recommend for the other two Services.
That was a cavalier manner in which to treat the Admiralty on this subject. The Admiralty has been given a certain amount of freedom, but not enough to do what it wanted to do. I think that the Admiralty is right, and if the other two Services wish to obtain a long-service force, as is desirable, sooner or later they will have to fall into line with the Admiralty on this subject of pensions.
Now that the shape and size of the Navy are beginning to become apparent, I hope that some attention will be paid to replacing out-of-date accommodation. I have raised this subject before and, as hon. Members know, I am very keen to know about accommodation at the "Caledonian." The Admiralty has done a good job in trying to make the best of bad conditions. Is the Admiralty now to spend more money on accommodation ashore?
Status is another important matter. Nothing does more harm than to have pettifogging playing about with status. When I was a boy artificer and went to the Navy as a fifth-class artificer, I enjoyed the privileges of a chief petty officer. I lived in the artificers' mess and enjoyed exactly the same privileges as other members of the mess. I used the same accommodation, and wore the same dress.
That is not the case today. A fifth-class artificer has been gradually beaten down until today, in many cases, his position is about that of a leading hand. I am not saying that that is not right in accordance with such a man's rank, but it is a peculiar way of enticing boys to stay in the Navy when their status is steadily reduced. Such things breed


an outlook which can do immense harm and it is a pity that harm should be done by simple things like that. It is not only fifth-class engine room artificers who are affected. There are other instances where people doing a good job are annoyed. I hope that the Admiralty will consider some of those difficulties.
The Admiralty comes out very well in the Grigg Report and, with a number of qualifications, deserves credit.

8.9 p.m.

Brigadier O. L. Prior-Palmer: The hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) made an interesting speech. I know something about the Army, but nothing about the Navy, although at one time I tried hard to get into it.
I must add my compliments to the Grigg Committee and to the Government for the way in which, with a few exceptions, they accepted the Committee's recommendations with alacrity. The fact that nearly four years ago I wrote a report exactly following the lines of the Grigg Report is neither here not there, but it is a pity that these recommendations were not accepted three or four years ago. Perhaps one is allowed to blow one's trumpet in the House once every ten years.
There is one wider aspect of incentives to which I wish to draw attention, and it is one which has not been mentioned at all by anybody who has taken part in the debate or in the Grigg Report. There is a habit in the Services, more particularly in the Army, whereby, if anyone by any chance—a pay clerk in the pay office, for instance—overpays a man and he has not spotted it, he receives, eight or nine months later, a letter to say that he must refund that amount of money. It is perfectly clear to me that the senior warrant officers and officers are quite capable of looking at their pay and of knowing what is actually due to them. They will probably resist an over-payment immediately, but that is entirely untrue of the men.
I can think of absolutely nothing which infuriates a man more than, having been issued with his pay, finding, nine months later, that he must refund some of it, having spent the money in the meantime. I hope that my hon. Friend will have a look at that. It was recommended during

our debate on the new Army Act, but I do not think that anything has been done about it. I cannot for the life of me see why the Pay Corps, which makes the mistake, should not be made to refund the money, because it perhaps might make its staff a little more careful another time.
Now I wish to refer to the paragraph on training which is in the Report. I am also quite convinced—and I think it is proved by the figures—that we shall always get our recruits for the units which appear to provide the most exciting form of soldiering—such as the Paratroop Brigade, the Marine Commandos and the Brigade of Guards. They are not only the most dangerous, but, incidentally, the most strictly disciplined and the most smartly turned-out men, and I am talking about the training of men. There is nothing which so much upsets the ordinary soldier as wasting his time, as he calls it. There are a certain number of hours in the day, and it is very clearly stated in the Grigg Report that these hours have to be filled, so jobs are found for them.
I think that that is wrong. I have myself known commanding officers who would not do it, but who said that if there was nothing for the chaps to do, then let them get out and enjoy themselves, because there would be plenty of days on which they would have to work 14, 15 or 16 hours. If there is nothing for them to do, let us not invent something for them to do.
Then there is the question of imaginative training. It is so utterly unimaginative in some units, and such as I have myself seen in Germany. It is the sort of idea that we must not play Indians and boy scouts, which they like and enjoy, but the dreary kind of the old-fashioned infantry training, which has no counterpart in war. I hope that my right hon. Friend will ask the Director of Training to go round, as I myself have been able to do, and see the training programmes of some formations.
Let him also keep watch on those senior officers who have an inordinate number of large-scale exercises, particularly in Germany, where he knows that "Big Brother" will be watching, and where there is a tendency very often to lay on large-scale exercises. There are too many of them—I realise that we must have a certain number—when the basic training has not been done first. I have


seen some of these manoeuvres in Germany and have seen horrifying examples of a complete lack of basic training and ordinary fieldcraft, with which one wins battles in the long run. I think that large-scale training without individual training is a most dangerous thing when it comes to war.
On the question of equipment, I agree with the suggestion of the Grigg Report that a lot of the equipment of the Army is completely and absolutely out of date. Let us be reasonable about this and see how the thing works out. To start with, it is utterly wrong to compare the equipment of the British Army in Germany with that of the French or the Germans or the forces of any of those countries which were over-run during the war. If we have to make comparisons, let us make them with the Americans. There was a vast amount of equipment left over from the war, and these are the countries which have to start from scratch.
My right hon. Friend will know perfectly well that if he goes to the docks at Hamburg he will see the most magnificent dock equipment, because the Germans had to start from scratch after the war. The same applies to the Army. We have had to live on our fat. Think of the scream there would have been in this House if all that good equipment had been put up for sale for £20. I hope that my right hon. Friend will realise that the time has now come to get away from the patching up of old lorries, which is no longer economical at all, and that something more must be done about it.
It was in May of last year when my right hon. Friend's predecessor said that we were then embarking on a five-year plan, at the end of which the Army would be completely rearmed, and that there would be no more of this old equipment left. He said that a year ago. I believe that this is a serious matter, and that the issue of equipment should be speeded up in some way or other. It is scandalous that the Army have to borrow from other countries before engaging in large-scale exercises.
I do not know whether this story is true, but I was told of a formation which arrived in Cyprus recently—I believe it has now returned home again—which had been issued with lorries on which the figure £5 was marked in white paint

on the windscreens. They had been put up for sale, but suddenly withdrawn, and they had been valued at £5. This is not the sort of way to send our boys out there. It is particularly difficult to operate out-of-date equipment, and this is particularly true of wireless sets. We have the most brilliant radio mechanics and the most brilliant firms making these products in this country. They are prepared to give us ultra-modern sets which, incidentally, it would take much less time for recruits to learn to operate than the existing sets. It would take about half the time for a recruit to learn to operate this modern equipment that it does to operate and keep in repair an antiquated set.
I wish also to make a plea on the question of pensions, on which the case was clearly stated in the leading article in The Times today. Recommendation 6 of the Report has been accepted by the War Office with regard to widows' pensions particularly, and that is fine, but that will apply only to those who become widows in the future. At present, 8 out of 10 widows—and, after all, there are only 9,000 of them—are existing on pensions of £189 a year, and 3 out of 10 on pensions less than the scales of the National Assistance Board. Therefore, I hope that the plea that has been made from both sides of this House today will be effective and that something will be done about the existing widows of ex-Service men.
It is well known to some hon. Members who attend these debates that for five years past I have raised the question of the education of children. I have looked up the speech I made a very long time ago on this matter, and though much has been done about it, there is still one thing which has not been mentioned in the Grigg Report, but which, I think, should have been. I agree with the conclusions of the Report that a lack of education facilities for Service families and children has in the past been the greatest deterrent to re-engagement and to enlistment.
Certain allowances which have been introduced, and are now to be increased as a result of this Report, are good and reasonable, with this exception, that this allowance for families living in England is subject to tax whereas for those living abroad it is not taxed. That was a very


strong reason for criticism when the allowance was introduced, and I know all the arguments that were raised about it. It is always stated by the Civil Service—the backroom boys—that because Civil Service pensions are taxed in this country, Service allowances are also taxed. There is no comparison between the two. I ask my right hon. Friend to do his best to have these allowances made free of tax in this country as they are abroad.
Another point, which I raised about three years ago, is that education authorities have a sum of money to spend in respect of the education of the children of officers, particularly those abroad. When I raised this point I had the support of my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede). This system is not working well because of the way in which various local authorities assess requirements. There is no uniform method, and very much depends upon the mentality and outlook of the local authority concerned.
Another point to be borne in mind is that the local authority assesses the need upon the basis of the cost of living in its area. That is all right, but it bears not the slightest relationship to the cost of living in Singapore, where the officer's family may be living. How is a local authority to know what is the appropriate figure? I am not blaming local authorities I am blaming the system. As the result of the debate that we had three years ago it was agreed by the then Minister of Education—my right hon. Friend the Member for Moss Side (Dame Florence Horsbrugh)—that something mist be done, and that the matter must be placed in the hands of the Minister of Education and not of local authorities.
My right hon. Friend was about to do that when she was succeeded in office, and her successor immediately reversed the process. The position has not changed since. I plead with my right hon. Friend to look at the matter again and have a talk with the Minister of Education, to see whether something better can be done. A committee was set up to go into this matter as a result of the debate, and the deliberations and report, if any, of that committee must be knocking about either in my right hon. Friend's Department or in the Ministry of Education. I know that my right hon.

Friend the Member for Moss Side had agreed to implement my suggestion.

Mr. Ede: The hon. and gallant Member for Worthing (Brigadier Prior-Palmer) was kind enough to confer upon me the distinction of being his right hon. Friend because I supported him on the occasion to which he has referred. I still support him, but I suggest that these allowances ought to be paid by the War Office and not the Ministry of Education, which is bound to get into conflict with local authorities. If this is regarded as an allowance because the father is in the Services, it should be a Service allowance. I ask the Minister to give attention to that point of view.

Brigadier Prior-Palmer: If that is a better way of doing it, it would satisfy me. I am quite prepared to give way to the right hon. Gentleman's wisdom in this matter.
I now want to refer to the question of entertainment allowances. Whether they are right or wrong, they are an established process. All over the world people in responsible positions have to spend a certain amount of money on entertainment. Commanders-in-chief are given an entertainment allowance, but none of the very senior staff officers gets anything at all, and these officers have to entertain civic dignitaries and other visitors who come to inspect and look around from time to time. Commanders-in-chief have to allot money to these poor fellows out of their own pathetic allotments. It is a very parsimonious and silly system. It would not cost much to give these senior officers an allowance, and I ask my right hon. Friend to look into that question.
Much has been said about the recent pay rises. I suppose that my right hon. Friend knows that those people with the rank of colonel who happened to be living in married quarters when colonels had their pay raised had it not only nullified but reduced by the fact that almost immediately the rents of married quarters were put up and the price of coal rose, also. These officers were worse off than before the pay rise. Nothing is calculated to infuriate a person more than to be given something with one hand only to have it snatched away with the other. That is the situation in this case, and one must also remember all the clerical work involved.
One of the paragraphs in the Report which impressed me, and which I know to be true, is that which deals with the question of public relations between the Services and the public. It takes about a year for somebody like me, coming out of the Army after twenty-seven or thirty years, to realise the general attitude of the average member of the British public towards the Services. Except for those civilians who have served in the forces, the public's ignorance of what goes on there is phenomenal—and the ignorance of the average officer of the way in which to deal with civilians or the Press is deplorable. If officers could spend eight months taking an interview night for a few hours every Friday in various constituencies, it would do them a world of good.
A little more than the Report mentions could be done to improve relationships between officers and the Press It is no good telling an officer that he must be prepared to see Press representatives whenever they want to see him, because I do not believe that he will know how to talk to them. A Press representative might even irritate him to a certain extent. In Germany, there is a school called the Innere Fhürung, most of whose operations I dislike intensely. But one aspect of that school's work is excellent. It actually teaches officers how to deal with the Press and with radio interviewers.

Mr. R. J. Mellish: It is also teaching democracy.

Brigadier Prior-Palmer: Yes, but I was not talking about that. The right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) seems to have found something funny in what I have said. He has seen fit to be rude to me across the Floor of the House no less than three times. I have never answered him back, but one day I shall do so and he will lose the battle. Does not he agree that it is a good idea that officers should be taught how to deal with Press representatives?

Mr. G. Brown: As the hon. and gallant Gentleman is so touchy about it, I will tell him. He said he disliked intensely everything that the school was doing except one thing, which he referred to as teaching officers to handle the Press. My hon. Friend commented on the fact that

what the hon. and gallant Gentleman disliked intensely was that the school was teaching democracy, and I drew attention to the extraordinary fact that the hon. and gallant Gentleman had a general dislike of the teaching of democracy.

Brigadier Prior-Palmer: I do not think that that interruption is really worth answering, but I will answer. The hon. Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) and I went round that school together. I know what the hon. Gentleman meant. He meant that there the officers were being taught how to deal with the Communism which raises its ugly head in the ranks. I did not want to refer to that.
I repeat that I think it would be an excellent thing if a school, or a short course—it does not have to be a long one—were set up in this country for the purpose of teaching officers how to handle the Press. I think that members of the Press should be encouraged to interview officers and inspect the units, and that officers should be encouraged to talk to the Press frankly and freely and tell them what is being done.

8.30 p.m.

Mr. R. J. Mellish: The hon. and gallant Member for Worthing (Brigadier Prior-Palmer) touched on a number of points with which I also wish to deal, particularly those referring to Germany. I intend to make some comparisons between the existing German Army and our forces, but before doing so, may I join with other hon. Members who have complimented the Grigg Committee on its excellent Report? What impresses me most about the Report is the fact that it is a fine humane document.
For the first time I have seen an official journal emanating from Government sources in which the authors have got hold of the human aspect of the problems confronting the Armed Forces. In the Report the soldier is treated as a human being and given some sense of dignity. The Report refers to the mothers of serving men and the affection which Service men have for their homes and how their home life is broken when they go into the Army. I pray that some of the lessons emanating from the Grigg Report will evoke a response in Government circles. Although I appreciate that many of the recommendations contained in the Grigg Committee have been accepted,


there are many which have not, and I hope to deal with some which have not been accepted during my speech.
I wonder what would have happened had a Labour Government been in power when the Grigg Committee issued its Report. Conservatives may not like what is stated in it, but had a Labour Government been in office the Daily Express and the Daily Mail and papers of that kind would, I imagine, have run headlines like, "Shocking state of equipment in the Armed Forces"—that would have made a first-class headline. Another might have been "£10,000 million spent in seven years under a Labour Government, yet we are told that barracks, married quarters and Service accommodation is in appalling condition"—"inefficient Socialism!" One can imagine all sorts of headlines such as that. But with the present Tory Government in power, all that has appeared in the Press has been the comment that a number of the Committee's Recommendations have been accepted. It should go on record that the Grigg Committee is telling this Government that they have failed to do what they ought to have done over the period of years since they have been in power, bearing in mind that they have had millions of pounds with which to do these things and plenty of time in which to do them. I hope very much that now their time is limited and that this Government will be kicked out in the near future.
The hon. and gallant Member for Worthing referred to Germany. I visited Germany in company with him and we both inspected the school which he mentioned. As I saw what was going on there, the senior officers were being taught democracy and the simple facts of life, something which the hon. and gallant Member and I found rather amusing. But, of course, in Germany it is essential that these officers should be told something about democratic values and standards. It is true that also they were taught how they should negotiate with the Press.
One thing which impressed me about the German Army was the wonderful barracks and accommodation provided for the troops, so much so that, as a Britisher, I was almost ashamed to see it. In this country almost ever since we have had an Army we have had the same sort of accommodation; Nissen huts accommodating about 25 men, all living together, and all expected to keep the hut nice and

clean for the regular weekly inspections. That is not the case in Germany where they provide first-class barrack accommodation with rooms which accommodate four or five men and where a much homelier atmosphere exists. My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton-on-Tees (Mr. Chetwynd) referred to the sense of dignity which this sort of thing gives to a man, because it makes him feel that he is someone, instead of being just one in a herd.
I have spoken before about the married quarters and barrack accommodation provided for our troops, and it is appalling. Look at what the Grigg Committee says about it:
Too much of present accommodation, both married and single, is nothing short of scandalous"—
that is the statement of the Grigg Committee, those are not my words.
The Services have an immense task if they are, within a reasonable time, to get everybody into buildings which come up to decent minimum standards.
This is the situation after seven years of Tory Government and after the expenditure of nearly £10,000 million. That is what the Grigg Committee says in 1958. Every Tory Member of Parliament interested in the welfare of the Army ought to be attacking the Government over this. It is indefensible that we have not done better for our troops. As the Secretary of State knows only too well, he "pinched" money from Vote 8 given to him by Parliament in the Estimates for barracks and spent some of the money on married quarters when in fact Parliament had decided to allow him to borrow money for that purpose—we have had this argument before—and I say that he took money from that Vote which should have been spent on the building of barracks—

Mr. Soames: No.

Mr. Mellish: We have had this argument before, and last time the right hon. Gentleman agreed with me—

Mr. Soames: We have had this already. I do not think that I personally have stolen any money from anywhere. Certainly, money was transferred from Vote II to Vote 8 in accordance with a principle approved by this House.

Mr. Mellish: I would refer the right hon. Gentleman once again to the Report of the Select Committee, which stated


that money had in fact been taken for one purpose which had been voted by Parliament for a different specific purpose, namely, to provide for buildings and accommodation.
During the years the Government have not done enough. The excuse of the Government is that one of their problems has been the contraction of the Services. I want to ask a question on that. I understand that the Minister of Defence is to reply to this debate. I do not see how he can do so, as to my knowledge he has not been here since 5 o'clock. Whether he is to be furnished with a list of questions to answer or whether he will just make his own speech I would not know. This is a very discourteous way to treat the House. I want to ask the Minister of Defence a question, but I feel that I shall not get an answer. The question is, what programme is there for the building of barracks? Is a specific amount of accommodation proposed? The money is available, and is there.

Mr. Soames: Speaking from memory, I can tell the hon. Gentleman the answer to that question. We are planning to start next year. I think it is barrack-room accommodation for 13,000 men and accommodation for 3,400 married quarters. That is the answer.

Mr. Mellish: I would like to ask the right hon. Gentleman a question immediately. Does that programme mean that we shall practically solve the problems of barrack-room accommodation? Have the Government a long-term plan? The right hon. Gentleman seems almost shocked at those questions. We are entitled to know the answers. The Government have the money and the time; why have we not had better results? The Government have a very poor record to show.
Now I come back to the Grigg Report and to the recruitment figures. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey), I will refer to Appendix A. That Appendix is remarkable, in view of the recruitment figures which we have had from the right hon. Gentleman. We are achieving the target figure, but we are not very much concerned whether or not the Government will reach their target of 165,000. I think they will, on the assumption that

the figures given earlier are maintained. The right hon. Gentleman spoke about the October figures; I wish he would give us the actual details.

Mr. Soames: I have not got those, but they are better in terms of man-years. The October figure was about 40 less in terms of numbers than the September, but in terms of man-years it is better, because the six-year and nine-year men were up. There were some 40 fewer three-year men.

Mr. Mellish: I am very much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman, but that is contrary to the figure which he expressed a short while ago when he said he expected that the October and November figures would be lower. I congratulate him upon the October figures being maintained so well. This fact confirms that we shall achieve the figure that the Government require by 1963.
The biggest problem is whether that figure is the right one. It seems to be a much more sensible way of looking at the matter than whether we achieve the Government's 165,000 or not. We have almost a war in Cyprus, and we may have a war with Malta next. That is on the cards. We may need a lot more troops to occupy Malta as one outcome of the Government's foreign policy. I do not think that 165,000 men will be enough. We must get rid of the Government so that we can have a different foreign policy, when I am certain that 165,000 will be adequate to our needs.
Paragraph 61 of the Grigg Report refers to the military police. I have a phobia about the military police, not that I had any trouble with them in the Army for in the six years I was there I avoided those people with great dexterity. The most insulting thing that can happen to a man coming home on leave to see his wife and children is to be confronted at Waterloo Station by a wretched lancecorporal—probably the same one I saw there throughout the war who never fired a shot—and asked for a pass to show that he has the right to go to see his wife and children. It happened to me on many occasions. It made me so mad that I could not tell the right hon. Gentleman what I said.
I ask in all seriousness why we do not stop military police patrolling railway stations? All that is wanted is an R.T.O. to help the soldier, sailor or airman in


travel difficulties. We should treat these people like human beings and not ask if they have permission to walk about at Waterloo Station. That is nothing to do with the job of military police, who should be inside the camps seeing that no evil people got in and keeping wretched soldiers locked up. Will the right hon. Gentleman back up that part of the Grigg Report and stop military police going to railway stations? If he can stop them at once we shall be most grateful.
It is now 8.40 and we still have not got the Minister of Defence here. I wish to back up a question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West. Why was the R.A.F. scheme of discipline dropped? That was a scheme in which an investigation into discipline was operated by the R.A.F. at a depot. The Grigg Report said that it was a great pity the scheme was dropped. We are entitled to ask why.
One of the most important things we want in the Army is the principle of a general working day. The hon. and gallant Member for Worthing referred to this important matter. A man has to go on parade at 7.30 and other times during the day with no military purpose, yet there are hours when he has very little to do. That is one of the worst aspects of Army life. Why not let him start and finish a job and have the rest of the time to himself? I know from my experience in the Army that when that is done men work harder and better. We should let the men go out as much as possible in civilian clothes.
Civilianisation is a shocking word, but the Germans are making a good job of this. The German Army has a trade union. I find that weird and wonderful. They have a shop steward at every camp and the commanding officer is not allowed to give more than seven days punishment. If lie wants to give more punishment the matter has to go before a civilian court. They also have a conference every year at which shop stewards say what they think of the Army from the lowest ranker to the officers. The "top brass" actually go to the conference and listen to what they have to say.
The Secretary of State for War is a democrat, but I think, with all the arrogance we see in this House, especially from the Minister of Defence, it would do him good to know what soldiers think

about the equipment, the barracks and the Government. I am not advocating a trade union in the Armed Forces; I do not think we have reached that stage, although my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) was very anxious to have one. Looking at the German set-up, I am sure that the attempt to get some civilian influence is something that we might well copy, and a lead has been given in this matter by the Grigg Committee's Report.
I should like to say a word about resettlement. The disadvantage to the soldier today, as I have said before in this House, and I think everyone agrees, comes at the time when he leaves the Army. Where is he to go? What accommodation is available for him? Members of Parliament are troubled by letters from soldiers nearing the end of their period of service asking if they can be put on the local council housing lists and the answer is "No". I ask the right hon. Gentleman to look at this matter seriously.
Could not we consider whether it is practicable to advance loans and really to go out of our way, perhaps in conjunction with the Soldiers' Sailors' and Airmen's Association, to see if we cannot do something for them and work out a scheme. That should not be too difficult. Perhaps the Armed Forces might even find some way of providing a building society scheme to help these people. I am certain of this—and I have said this before in the House—that the finest recruiting sergeant is the soldier himself and it will be a great help if he knows that at the end of his period of service he will have a home to go to.
Why is the Navy so much better than the Army on matters of public relations? Why is the Army showing no imagination whatsoever with regard to public relations? I can well imagine that with some of the barracks that we have, the Army does not want some of the in-laws and "outlaws" to see them, but if we could get some camps worth seeing it might not be a bad idea to have open days. The trouble is, of course, they may see inadequate equipment there. I realise that that is part of the difficulty. With regard to the Navy they can see the first-class ships, although perhaps not many of them, on open days. I think that this seriously needs attention. If we are to sell the


Army we have to do what the Conservative Party is doing today and employ some good publicity agents. I suggest that the Army should look at this matter very seriously to make certain that we put over our story better.
As to education, the Grigg Committee's Report, in paragraph 86, states that a great deal of educational training for young men who enter the Services has already been done. It says, for example:
… about 4,000 regular airmen obtained the University of Cambridge General Certificate of Education in 1956–57. We get the impression, however, that the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy may be more enthusiastic about this work than the Army, and we hope there is no danger of the Army becoming a cultural desert …".
I hope that the Minister of Defence, although I do not know how he will reply to the debate because he has heard very little of it, will make some reference to education and give an assurance that the Army takes education just as seriously as the Royal Air Force and the Navy.

Mr. Soames: It does.

Mr. Mellish: Let him say what the Government are going to do about it. Let him answer the Grigg Committee's Report when it says that there may be a "cultural desert". Those are the words not of the Opposition but of Sir James Grigg and his colleagues. I should like to know if there is any substance in them. We hope that there is not.
Sir James Grigg and the Committee have rendered a very great service. I think that there is a genuine desire not only on the part of M.P.s but of the public outside to recognise that the serving soldier today is a first-class citizen doing a fine job. In times of danger we expect him to do all he can to protect us. We owe him a duty, particularly at the end of his service. It is up to us to endorse the recommendations of the Grigg Committee.

8.50 p.m.

Mr. F. A. Burden: I represent a constituency which has a tradition of service to the Crown second to none, and I am sure that many of my constituents will be interested not so much in what is said in the Grigg Report but in what comes about as the result of it. In general, the unanimity of the House

today, apart from one or two very mild political slants, inclines me to believe that a great deal in the interest of the Services will come out of the Report.
There is no doubt that a complete reorganisation of the three Services will take place in the years ahead, much of it the result of the complete change in equipment. We are entering a new age which will not only demand completely re-equipped forces, but will make tremendous demands for men who have much higher technical qualifications than have been required hitherto. Although this will present certain difficulties, the very fact that this new and dramatic equipment will be used by the Services will almost certainly make a great appeal to the many young men with a leaning towards the higher technologies who are now taking advance technical education in our country's schools and colleges.

Mr. Mellish: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Now that the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Defence has arrived, can you tell us how he can reply to a debate which he has not heard?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Gordon Touche): That is not a point of order.

Mr. Burden: If we are to have forces fully capable of handling the new equipment, it is perfectly clear that we shall have to pay the men in them money equivalent to, or better than, they would obtain in private industry outside. Moreover, the whole matter of discipline and accommodation must be looked at very carefully indeed.
I have been very interested to read the Grigg Committee's comments on the new attitude of officers and commanding officers towards other ranks in their approach to discipline. This is a point of view accepted and understood generally in the House. We all accept that the old "bull" which was part of the Army of the past must not be part of the Army of tomorrow if we are to have the recruits we all regard as necessary. In this connection, I wish to draw to the attention of the House a report, which appeared in my local newspaper the Chatham Observer, of something which happened in Chatham Barracks, at the Royal Engineers' School last week. The report is headed:
Repeat inspection angers Sappers".


It reads:
The command, 'Stand by your beds, is one of the less popular orders received in the Army today, but to get it twice in one day, once during off-duty hours, was the lot of some 200 Sappers of 'A' Squadron of 10 Trades Training Regiment, Royal Engineers, at Kitchener Barracks, on Monday.
When this order is given, it usually means that a group of soldiers in a barrack room have to stand beside their beds while an officer carries out a thorough inspection of the room in order to ensure that the men are maintaining a certain standard of cleanliness in their accommodation.
Such an inspection was carried out by an officer on Monday morning and although the 200 men of 'A' Squadron had cleaned their rooms to such an extent that in the words of one Sapper, 'they would have put any housewife to shame', the officer apparently thought differently.
The men were told to clean their rooms again after hours. It started at about 8 o'clock, and many of the men were there until 10 o'clock at night, in carrying out this duty.
I feel that this is something which we should bring to the notice of my right hon. Friend so that, if possible, the views of the Grigg Committee could be translated through commanding officers to their officers and a much more enlightened attitude towards discipline could be taken. The report goes on to say—
Said one of the 200 angry young men: 'In our estimation the rooms were in good order, and whether or not the officer was correct in ordering another inspection, the fact is we felt that it should not have had to be carried out in off-duty hours. Thirty rooms were involved and the sort of thing we were picked up for was surface dust in the corners, which is almost unavoidable.'
There is much more in that report, but I will not weary the House with it because there is not time.
That is an example of exactly what the Grigg Committee has been saying should be abolished. I do not think that any of us, certainly not the Grigg Committee, wishes to condone anything that would interfere with proper standards of cleanliness and discipline. That would not bring an improvement in the forces, but would decrease their efficiency in every possible way. But there are reasonable ways of preserving the proper standards. There are certain conditions of discipline which were carried out in the past and which today are out-dated and certainly have no place in the Army, the Navy or Air Force of the future, if we are to effect the recruitment that we wish.
In Gillingham and the Medway towns there is a good deal of uncertainty because the Nore Command is being closed down, and I hope, because of the traditions of those towns in Service matters, that a decision about the future use of Chatham Barracks will shortly be made. It is the newest naval barracks in the country and it should have some part in the future either of the Army or the Navy. I know that negotiations have been going on with the Royal Engineers. It is hoped in the Medway towns that the Royal Engineers will occupy Chatham Barracks. But whatever the position, I beg of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence that a decision will be taken in the near future.
I would remind the right hon. Gentleman that when it was decided to abolish the Nore Command building had already commenced on an estate at Dargett's Wood, in Rainham, for much-needed married accommodation. As soon as the decision to abolish Nore Command was made, work on that estate stopped. Whatever the position may be, it is clear that there is an urgent need for married accommodation. It is to be hoped that some really good use will be made of Chatham Barracks. If troops are stationed there, the accommodation at Dargett's Wood will still be needed and I hope that work on that estate will be resumed immediately.
I should like to join with the hon. Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) on the question of resettlement. Since I have been in this House I, with others, have pressed for steps to be taken to ensure that local authorities are made aware of the problems of men leaving the Services. On two occasions, in conjunction with the Service Ministries, the Minister of Housing and Local Government has requested local authorities to give men leaving the forces an opportunity of getting on their housing lists if they indicate within a year of leaving the forces that they wish to take up permanent residence within the area of the local authority to whom they write for accommodation. Often that is not carried out as effectively as it should be, and I hope that both sides of the House will join once again in asking local authorities to give the utmost sympathetic consideration to the position of Regular men leaving the forces.

9.0 p.m.

Mr. George Brown: Sometimes when one winds up the debate from this side of the House it is a little difficult to know what to say. One has the feeling that the Minister has heard it all, or that all that can be said has been said by somebody or other, and it seems superfluous to try to repeat it again within the space of half an hour. I do not have that trouble today.
I have a very important rôle to try to fulfil: that is, to try in half an hour to tell the Minister of Defence what has been said in the four hours when he has not been here. I will do my best, but for the Minister to take down his notes fast enough as I speak so that he can be ready with the answers, despite his well-known capacity for writing all his speeches word for word, will be quite a business for him. If he finds that he is getting behind me in the process, I hope he will indicate so that I may go back and give him a chance to catch up. No doubt the right hon. Gentleman will explain why he thought it not necessary to hear what some of my hon. Friends and hon. Members on his own side of the House had to say.
That ties up with the Minister's whole attitude to the Grigg Report. One of the peculiar things about it has been his coyness towards the House. When the Report was presented he took it away to think about it, as was perfectly proper. He did not, however, come back to the House, as is the normal practice, and make a statement about it, tell us that it was in the Vote Office and say that there would be a White Paper on it. He did not answer a Question upon it. He slipped it in the most hurried way one afternoon into the Vote Office just two days before the Army Annual Act came up for renewal.
Then, with no announcement that it was there, the right hon. Gentleman slipped away to a Press conference, organised with a great fanfare of trumpets, as has become the practice since he has been at the Ministry. There, he picked out all the nice bits where he seemed to be giving money away and so arranged it that on the following day the newspapers had bits about his give-aways, but not a single word was given to us. Had we not protested from this side of the House, what would have happened would have been that we had the Army Annual

Act under the new procedure and no effective debate on the Report; and that would have been regarded as the end of the matter for the right hon. Gentleman. I can only say that his absence from the debate today has tied up very much with his whole approach to his duty to the House of Commons and with the way in which he has handled the presentation of the Report.
That is a pity, because it is an extremely good Report. [Interruption.] The Minister must not tell me to get on with it. He must sit here a little while. No doubt, he is anxious and impatient to be gone again almost before he has come, but he must wait awhile. The Report is a good one and should have been presented with much more openness and frankness.
In a number of places, the Report makes recommendations which the Minister has accepted and to some of which I shall refer. In other places, it refers to recommendations which he has not accepted. There is one which, frankly, we still do not know whether he has accepted. I refer to the recommendation based on paragraph 101, which refers to the question of an automatic review of Service pay every second year and goes on to say that
this should take account of movements in civilian earnings over a range of occupations to be determined by agreement between the Treasury and the Service Departments.
The recommendation goes on to say that the first review
should be carried out in time for any change in rates to be introduced on 1st April, 1960".
Many hon. Members on the Government side have tried to explain this away this afternoon. There is, however, no doubt that it looks like a recommendation, and the acceptance looks like the acceptance of a recommendation to review Service pay and pensions every second year with a view to making changes if changes in circumstances so demand. This, I am sure, is how it was presented outside. In fact, however, when the Minister of Health was asked about this on 11th November, he said to one of my hon. Friends:
There is nothing in what the hon. Member has read out to indicate an automatic link."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11th November, 1958; Vol. 595, c. 315.]
That would seem to be fair enough
The Minister of Defence himself last Wednesday, answering my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) said:
What I have said is that we are going to have a re view every two years … in order to decide whether, if there has been a change, any adjustment in pay and pensions is necessary."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th November, 1958; Vol. 595, c. 1121.]
I would have thought both those remarks meant that there is no automatic link. It is merely that somebody will look at it and leave it there. Any suggestion—and there was a suggestion made—that the forces are likely to be increased by this will be as uncertain in the future as it has been in the past.
I ask the Minister to make it clear here so that nobody is subsequently misled. If, as I believe, there is no commitment, let him say "There is no commitment". There will be a review by somebody unstated—we do not know whether it is to be an independent review or one by the Service Departments. Perhaps the Minister could tell us what review he has in mind? In any case he must make it clear to the Services that as it stands there is the intention to tie this to the cost of living or other changes in circumstances, and that he is making no commitment that there should be any movement, up or down, as a result of the review.
I am not clear what the Committee meant. The words:
The next review should be carried out in time for any change in rates to be introduced on 1st April, 1960 …
make it clear that what the Committee meant was a review that was operative, a review that would change the rates in the light of the changes in circumstances that were found. That is what the Committee meant. The Minister does not mean this and, with respect, he ought to make the position clear.
As to the nature of the Report, everybody has said how good it is. The Secretary of State for War, who opened the debate, was very pleased with it. Let us be clear what is the nature of the Report. Everything in that Report is a criticism of the Conservative Governments since 1951. Whether the Minister has accepted it or not, the Report is a complete condemnation of their failures over the years, and most of the things in it are things we have been urging upon them quite unsuccessfully through all those times. It does not really matter that the Government are now accepting

belatedly some of those things. Of course, one is pleased they are doing so, but let us face it: they were all things the Grigg Committee said ought to have been done a long time ago and which all these Ministers have failed to do.
There is one other thing. I will not read paragraphs 5 and 98, but there the Report states specifically that if we want to keep up the present trends in recruiting, for heaven's sake do not pick out "the plums". Those were the words used. The Committee said, do not pick out the plums from our recommendations, because all these things have their bad effects, their discouraging effects on recruiting, and so the recommendations ought to be taken as a whole. What the Government have done is exactly that—they have taken the plums and left a lot of other things.
I cannot help calling this the story of the sevens. We have had seven Ministers of Defence in office in seven years, all of whom have failed to deal with any of the recommendations of the Grigg Committee. We have now had a committee of seven people: one who retired from the public service in order to become a Conservative Minister during the war because they could not find one from the benches opposite, and then left this House in 1945, thirteen years ago. One businessman. One retired trade union leader, the ex-chairman of the A.E.U. Two schoolmasters, and a very charming, able lady who some years ago gave up running the Women's Royal Air Force. Seven outsiders sat for seven months and did all these things that the seven Ministers of Defence have not been able to do in seven years.
It is fantastic. We have had the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and I do not know who else. They have all been through this office. We have had field marshals and also the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill). None of them was able to do any of these things until they found seven outsiders—school-masters, trade unionists and the like—and in seven months those persons have been able to do what these seven Ministers could not do in seven years. The Government may take a bow now and say they are carrying out some of the Committee's recommendations, but it is a belated, death-bed repentance for their past behaviour.
I would draw to the attention of the Minister of Defence the major criticism, which I fear may otherwise pass unnoticed by him. It is the criticism of his policy which he least likes or understands. It is the criticism in paragraph 35 in which the Committee said:
Leaving aside the influence of people, there is no doubt that the potential recruit is swayed very much by current thinking about the Forces and their place in society, and that a certain current confusion of mind about the purpose of the Services in peace-time constitute a powerful discouragement.
I ask the Minister to note this:
The confusion arises primarily from the decision to base defence strategy on a willingness to resort ultimately to nuclear weapons. This has led to a lot of talk about push-button warfare, which to the uninformed conjures up visions of be-spectacled back-room boys …
This is a criticism of the effect which the Minister's central strategy has had, to which we have referred again and again. He has emphasised too much the basing of his policy on thermo-nuclear weapons, on the threat of the great deterrent, so that he has, as we have told him in defence debates year after year, introduced a very great deal of confusion in the minds of all sorts of people. This has had its own discouraging effect on the willingness of people to volunteer for the forces. I hope that his White Paper in the early part of next year will deal with this central confusion which stems from the basis of his policy and that he will do something to explain it this year.
I pass to one of the specific weaknesses in the state of our forces upon which the Report comments. Let us remember that the Report is concerned only with things which have an effect on recruiting. The Committee was not set up to inquire into the state of the forces, and anything that it says incidentally on that subject is only because it has some effect on recruiting. One must not assume that all that there is in the Report is all that the Committee would have said had it had wider terms of reference.
First, there is the question of recruiting and the size of the forces. The Committee makes it clear that it takes no responsibility for the figure of 375,000 and that it is working on what the Government have said to it. We gather from the documents submitted—I believe it is the first time that we have had it put on record by the Government—that 375,000

is the Government's target and that 165,000 is what they are after for the Army. The Committee, having said what most of us gather, that the present rate of recruiting makes it look as though forces of that size will be obtained, then put in Appendix A, which I understand, although it is not made very clear, is an appendix submitted to the Committee by the Ministry of Defence—not the Committee's Appendix but a Ministry of Defence paper.
Does the Minister of Defence stand by that Appendix, and does he think that he can do two things at once, on the one hand say that he feels pretty sure now that we shall get the forces that we require voluntarily, and on the other hand stand by a paper which proves, to use its own words, that we need one in three of the available manpower? Both those things cannot be true. We must at the moment be getting more than one in three of the available manpower unless we are using "available" in a very loose way. I think that that is what is happening with this Appendix.
As has been said, what has been done has been to rule out an absurd number of people as not being available for Regular service. We ought to get this matter clear, because this document may be hallowed by age unless the point is cleared now. It cannot be true that about 66 per cent. of all the young men becoming 18 are ruled out for Regular service in the forces. What has happened is that the Government have taken National Service experience, have observed that so many men have been deferred, and have assumed that the experience will be repeated for Regular service. I believe that that is part of the error. I do not press this unduly, except to hope that the Minister of Defence will make it clear, so that in future debates we are not referred to an appendix which must be wrong.
We are given the astonishing figure that 15 per cent. of all the young men possibly available are ruled out by standards other than medical. The very fact that the Government had to juggle about with the figures and to present them in a peculiar form suggests that there is something fundamentally wrong with the presentation. The Minister should make it clear that he does not accept those figures, if he intends to stand by the view that the 375,000 overall figure will be attained.


Some time ago, some of us did this exercise on our own and produced a figure of one in eleven of the total pool of manpower available. If some of the extravagant exceptions in the Appendix are disregarded, the same sort of figures are produced, and perhaps it would be better to stick to that proportion.
The last time we debated defence, the Minister spoke at the beginning of the debate, to be followed by his right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton (Mr. Head), who spoke with all the authority of an ex-Secretary of State and an ex-Minister of Defence at the appropriate time. He told us that the Hull Committee which he had set up and whose report had never been published, nor made available to the House, had recommended 220,000 men as the size for the Army. He castigated his right hon. Friend for having thrown that report overboard and, with no reason except hope, coming down on the figure of 165,000.
We ought to have the Minister's statement on this matter. This is his first chance to put it right. Is it true that he chose the figure of 165,000 in the teeth of the Hull report? Is it true that when he came into office he slashed the figure which his predecessor had thought necessary? The House should be told so that we shall know on what basis we are considering these figures.
I want now to deal with promotion from the ranks and with the whole basis of the officering of the forces, especially the Army, to which much of the Grigg Report is devoted. We have heard much today about why it is unreasonable to think that the Army is not taking a serious view about promoting from the ranks all the good young men it can, or taking directly candidates from grammar schools or from schools north of the Trent, as it has been put.
The Secretary of State's answer in part was to say that the Grigg Committee had got the figure wrong. However, the Committee obtained its figures from official sources, so that if it drew the wrong conclusion it did so on figures provided by Government Departments. The fact that the Departments have now corrected the figures does not meet the case.
In paragraph 17, the Report says:
The Army, on the other hand, fear that they will be unable to obtain sufficient entries of the right calibre to Sandhurst.

Throughout the Report is the suggestion that the Army is reluctant to take more recruits for Sandhurst from grammar schools or from schools in the North of England, or from the ranks, in the belief that the present standard will be lowered. That comes out too in the Government's comments on that part of the Report, in which they say that they want to get as wide a field of promotion and entry as they can, and that they are continuing to do all they can to get suitable candidates. Continuing to do all they can is what the Committee are against. It says that they are not doing enough and that there are other ways in which it can be got over—that the failure rate of the boys from the grammar schools is so very much heavier than the failure rate of boys from the public schools, that fewer boys from northern schools get through than bays from southern schools, and that the fact that it is so difficult to become an officer in the Army unless there is a certain pre-required background.
I think we ought to have from the Ministry of Defence a statement not that the Army will continue what it has been doing, but that there will be a vigorous overhaul of the Whole method of selection by the Army of candidates for the officer group, whether by direct entry or by promotion from the ranks. We were told earlier that there was a large failure rate among the non-public school boys and boys from grammar schools or the northern schools because they were being ploughed in the written examination.
We were told by the hon. and gallant Member for Worthing (Brigadier Prior-Palmer), when he interrupted my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton on Tees (Mr. Chetwynd), that it could not be anything else because there was no interview for Sandhurst. I have inquired into this and I am told that there is a selection board for Sandhurst. Therefore, it is not true to say that the ploughing of these boys indicated that their mental equipment had been shown to be not good enough, because we do not know how many were ploughed in the written examination and how many in the selection board.
Many of us have a feeling that the accent at the selection board and the public school background probably has a very great effect, and, despite what the Secretary of State says, the Report does represent part of the reason why the Royal


Air Force and the Royal Navy have a rather different record to show in this respect than the Army has. I hope we shall be told more about it, and I hope that the Minister will not underestimate the importance of this sort of feeling in the minds of young men and, even more, in the minds of their parents that the commissioned ranks are difficult for them to attain, which acts as a psychological barrier to the boy of 18 being encouraged by his parents to take up this sort of career.
I turn to the subject of accommodation briefly in order to give the Minister the chance to note that it has been raised. The Committee could not be rougher about this. There is the reference to the scandalous accommodation and the statement that the Army has not been spending the money which it should have been spending in this direction and has not been taking it seriously. I do not think there is any doubt that my right hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey) put his finger on it when he said that the real problem is the lack of decision by the Government about where they want the accommodation to be. I hope that the Minister will accept the seriousness of these criticisms. After all, seven years is a long time for a Government to have been spending £1,500 million a year or thereabouts and still to have it said at the end that the accommodation of the forces is in a scandalous state. I think we ought to expect the Government to tell us when they propose to make a start on putting it right.
Then, there is the question of equipment. Just as the Committee says the state of the accommodation is scandalous, so it says that the state of the equipment of the Army is shocking. It is all very well to shrug this off and say that we could not afford not to use these pent-up stores. After all, seven times £1,500 million is over £10,000 million, and in that time how many lorries have been cannibalised so much that it is not worth having them put right? If a senior commander-in-chief is having to travel with one empty Mercedes-Benz behind him because the car in which he is travelling might break down, if commanders-in-chief have to have Mercedes which have had two or three new engines, and the Germans say, "Let us present you with a new car. This one does you

no credit," this is not a thing to be shrugged off lightly.
It is no good merely saying that this is a wonderful Committee, that the House is grateful to it, and that the Government accept what it has said. It is the most crashing criticism of the Government, and if I were a Member of the Government I should be ashamed. Every hon. Member opposite must feel very ashamed about it. I have been told that radio sets of the type on which people trained in 1939 are still being used. They were being used twenty years ago. I have also been told that when we go on a combined exercise we have to borrow equipment, not from the Americans, but from the Germans, in order that we can put up a good show.
The Government's comment upon these remarks is an all-time record. In reply to this detailed and authoritative statement of the Committee the Government say that they
fully recognise the importance of good equipment.
There is not a single word to explain why this situation exists or how long it is going to remain. There is not a word as to whether it is true or untrue, important or unimportant. The Government simply say that they
fully recognise the importance of good equipment.
That is ridiculous.
I repeat that the Committee refers to this matter only in passing, because it can refer only in detail to things which bear upon recruitment. If the Committee had had wider terms of reference so that it could have looked at the equipment, it would have been able to deal with the question of armour. What would it have said about our lack of appropriate weaponsabout our lack of a new tank of lighter weight, or our lack of anti-tank missiles and new atomic weapons? We have been told that all conventional weapons will be of dual capability. What would the Committee have said about our failure to order a strike aeroplane, which failure will leave us in 1964 or 1965 with nothing to replace the Canberra? What would it have said about our failure to order a transport aircraft, which failure will mean that in 1962 or 1963 we shall not be able to move our troops anywhere in time for them to be effective?
This is a smashingly damaging report. It is damaging to the morale of the forces; it is damaging to the credit of the Government, and to all of us. To the extent that the Government have accepted the criticisms and have put some of the recommendations into effect, I congratulate them, but I hope that they will do much more than merely note the rest. I hope that they will get busy, in view of the fact that they will be out of office very soon. I would like them to set up this Grigg Committee, with its excellent membership, upon a permanent basis, so that it can clear up the mess before the next Labour Government has to try to deal with it in six months from now.

9.28 p.m.

The Minister of Defence (Mr. Duncan Sandys): I am glad that the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) ended his speech on a congratulatory note, which I appreciate. The House, the country and the Services are much indebted to Sir James Grigg and his Committee. They have rendered a service which will have a lasting effect. I entirely disagree with the right hon. Member for Belper that the publication of this Report will have a demoralising effect upon the Services. On the contrary, I believe that its publication and the prompt acceptance of so many of its recommendations by the Government has already had a stimulating effect upon the Services. It has been universally well received.
It was a fine Committee. In asking Sir James Grigg to be its chairman I was approaching a man whom I knew well. I had served as Financial Secretary at the War Office when he was Secretary of State for War. I knew what we were likely to get, and that there would be no mincing of words. I do not think it indiscreet to say that when I asked him to be the chairman of this committee he said, "You know me. You know that I am the sort of person who will never pay a compliment if I can possibly help it." I think that the Report bears that out.
The right hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey) congratulated us on having chosen Mr. Hugh Cudlipp as a member of the Committee. I think it was a very good choice, and I understand that Mr. Cudlipp has also been chosen by hon. Members opposite to prepare the new Labour Party General Election manifesto. The Grigg Report was a readable document in down-to-earth

language. I think that it is probably the first time that "Mum" has ever been laid on the Table of the House of Commons.
The right hon. Member for Belper and others asked, in particular, about the intentions of the Government regarding the biennial review. Our intentions are perfectly simple and straightforward. It is no use the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg)—I do not see him in the Chamber now—saying, as he has today and on other occasions, that the Government were guilty of sharp practice.
It has been suggested, both by the hon. Member for Dudley and the right hon. Member for Belper, that when we say that we are to have a review of pay and pensions it means that we shall have a review and do nothing about it in any circumstances. That is complete nonsense. The White Paper explains that the Government have agreed that Service pay and pensions should be reviewed regularly at intervals of not more than two years. In reply to the right hon. Gentleman I can tell the House that the first review will be made, as the Committee recommended, in time for any necessary changes to come into force on 1st April, 1960. You see, I am fully implementing the Committee's recommendation.
The purpose of this review will be to consider whether there has been a change of circumstances which makes it fair and desirable to increase Service remuneration. Of course, there are a variety of factors to be taken into account. The most important, and the one specifically mentioned by the Committee, is the question of whether there have been significant movements in civilian earnings. It is no use making play with whether we shall relate this review to the cost of living or civilian earnings. I do not think that a point can be scored over that. The Committee recommended that the review should take account of civilian earnings and that is what we propose to do. Civilian earnings do move normally with the cost of living.
At last we have got Service remuneration on a footing which, as is acknowledged in the Grigg Committee's Report, bears a fair and reasonable relationship to civilian earnings. Our acceptance of the biennial review should be regarded and I wish it to be so regarded by the


Services, as an honourable undertaking that we intend to maintain that position in the future. I hope that I have made the position absolutely clear and beyond any doubt, because I look upon the question of a biennial review as being most important. We have got the Service pay on to a footing which is regarded by the Grigg Committee as reasonable in comparison with civilian earnings; and I think it essential that the Services should have confidence in the fact that their pay and pensions will be maintained at a level which compares with what it might be possible for them to earn in civilian life.
The right hon. Member for Belper criticised Annexe A of the Report, which deals with Service requirements in relation to available manpower. He is probably right. I am not nailing my flag to the mast of Appendix A. I think that the right hon. Member for Dundee, West felt the same. We should not assume that two-thirds of all the young men are not potential recruits. It is not possible to say who is and who is not available. It is better to calculate Service requirements in relation to the total pool of young men who are coming forward.
Out of the total number of young men reaching the age of 18 the Services need one in eight. We are actually getting one in five. After 1962, when the population will be larger and the Service requirements smaller, the forces will need only one in 12. Provided that we offer them a good life under good conditions, that should be a manageable target. The right hon. Member for Dundee, West was right in suggesting that a proportion of young men joining the forces is appreciably above the age of 18. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would like to know the figures. Of the recruits obtained in the third quarter of this year, rather more than 55 per cent, were 18 years of age or below; about 20 per cent. were 19; about 20 per cent. were between 20 and 24, and 5 per cent. were over 24 years of age. This pattern is normal and is what we might have expected. I see no reason to suppose that it is a passing phenomenon.
The right hon. Member for Belper raised a very important question which is not strictly within the scope of the Grigg Committee's Report, but might be

considered to be within the scope of the debate since it has relevance to the problem of our recruiting target. That is the question of the adequacy of the Army of 165,000 that we are planning. Those who, a year ago, were saying that we would not get the recruits to meet our target have now very much changed their tune. With the exception of the hon. Member for Dudley they are saying, "Of course, we knew that you would get the recruits you needed to meet your targets, but your targets are not big enough. An Army of 165,000 will not be adequate." They say that the figure of 165,000 was arrived at on a political rather than on military considerations. In fact, I have been accused by the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) of "fudging" the targets, and by the hon. Member for Dudley of "cooking the books".

Mr. Paget: What about the right hon. Member for Carshalton (Mr. Head)?

Mr. Sandys: He used somewhat more parliamentary language.
In respect of those accusations it has been alleged that a military committee under General Hull recommended that our future all-Regular Army must have a minimum strength of 220,000 men. I have no idea where that figure came from. It certainly did not come from the Report of the Hull Committee. Before saying anything about the Hull Committee's Report I would make it clear that it is a highly secret report of about 300 pages which deals in great detail with the composition, distribution and strength of our forces, and many matters which are wholly secret in character. There can be no question of presenting it to the House and, therefore, I do not propose to quote from it. This figure of 220,000 certainly did not come from the Hull Committee's Report.
The Hull Committee recommended an Army of 197,000. The difference of about 30,000 between the Hull Committee's plan and the Army of 165,000 which we are now planning is accounted for almost entirely by two simple factors. The first is that the Hull Committee was instructed to assume that the British Army on the Rhine would be appreciably larger than is now planned.
The second factor is that by further civilianisation and a variety of administrative economies our present plan requires considerably fewer uniformed men in the base organisations and home garrison than were allowed for by the Hull Committee. Apart from the Rhine Army, both plans allow for about 60,000 men in overseas stations and the strategic reserve, about 20,000 fewer than we have in the present Army of 300,000. When we take into account the increased efficiency of an all-Regular force and the increased mobility, the difference in fighting capacity is smaller still.
The House may be surprised that the present fighting capacity of about 300,000 should be little greater than that of a future Army of 165,000. The explanation is that the abolition of National Service with its wasteful overheads, coupled with extensive civilianisation and a variety of administrative economies—as I have told the House before—will enable us to dispense with more than 100,000 uniformed men in the training and base organisation in Britain. I need hardly say that before deciding on the 165,000 plan we naturally worked out how the new Army would be composed and how its units would be distributed among various overseas stations and commitments. I cannot go into more detail tonight, but I hope that I have said enough to show that the accusations of irresponsibility were unfounded and unfair.
The right hon. Member for Belper, and also the right hon. Member for Dundee, West, questioned whether there were adequate arrangements in the Army for commissioning from the ranks. The right hon. Member for Dundee, West spoke of the difficulty of transferring from what he called the "N.C.O. ladder" to the "officer ladder." These are the existing arrangements: Sandhurst is intended as a cadet college for young men and it is thought right to keep it as such. Any man from the ranks considered to have the necessary qualities up to the age of 19¾ can go to Sandhurst and get a Regular commission. Potential officers above that age go to the officer cadet school at Aldershot and get short service commissions for eight years in the first instance, which later can be extended.
Last year, about 60 men went from the ranks to Sandhurst and more than 100 to the officer cadet school at Aldershot.

These figures, of course, do not include commissions to quartermaster rank. Any N.C.O. with more than twelve years' service is eligible for that commission and last year there were about 150 commissions of that kind. We should like very much—I emphasise this—to obtain more suitable officers from the ranks. I can assure the House that everything possible will be done to avoid missing any who have officer qualifications.
I have always been struck with, and believe in, Napoleon's saying that every soldier has a field marshal's baton in his knapsack. In future, the British soldier will have the added convenience of being able to carry his field marshal's baton in a hold-all, with handles.
We should like to get more cadets for Sandhurst with the widest possible educational background. The right hon. Member for Dundee, West and the hon. Member for Stockton-on-Tees (Mr. Chetwynd) referred to the Grigg Committee's sugestion that there might perhaps be some prejudice against boys from grammar schools and from the North. I do not believe that to be really the case. I think that the correct explanation given by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War is that the grammar schools are not submitting the cream of their boys to Sandhurst and that particularly in the North there is more of an industrial than a Service outlook. That view was borne out by an interesting interview given to the Bolton Evening News by the headmaster of Bolton County Grammar School. I will read what he said, because probably it is representative of the position:
I do not think that the Government deliberately draws a distinction between the public schools and the grammar schools. I think that the Army has been unfairly treated in this matter. On the whole, it is well known that grammar school boys are not in the least interested in the Army. Most of my boys, for instance, are interested in jobs in industry, in the universities and professions. We in the North just do not have an Army tradition.
I am not prepared to allow the position to rest there, but I believe that that is the position today. What it shows is that we have to overcome not prejudice in the Army, but lack of interest in the Services in the grammar schools. In the light of the Committee's Report, I can assure the House that we shall intensify our efforts to "sell" the Services to the grammar schools.
My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Norwood (Sir J. Smyth) mentioned the question of war pensions. That, he will understand, is outside the scope of this debate altogether and outside the scope of my responsibility. It is the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance and I am sure that he will note what my hon. and gallant Friend has said.
My hon. and gallant Friend also referred to the strained circumstances in which many Service widows are living, and I would like to say a word about that. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir E. Errington) and other hon. Members also referred to this matter. The Government have definitely accepted the Grigg Committee's recommendation that the widows of officers and other ranks whose husbands retire after the new scheme comes into operation next April will receive pensions at the rate of one-third of their husbands' pensions. On that, I need say no more. But the question remains—and this is a point in many people's minds—whether the new rates of widows' pensions should be applied retrospectively to existing widows and to future widows of men who are already retired.
It is a well-established principle, as the House knows, followed by successive Governments, that a public service pension should continue to be paid at the rates prevailing at the date when the pensioner retires. The abandonment of this principle might have far-reaching consequences. The Grigg Committee recognises that many retired officers and widows have had the value of their pensions eaten away by inflation. However, the Committee thought that it would be wrong to try to deal with Service pensions differently from the general body of pensions received from the State. It estimated that if all public service pensions, civilian and military, were to be brought up to the level of the latest current rates this would cost an additional £55 million a year.

Sir E. Errington: Sir E. Errington rose—

Mr. Sandys: I will certainly give way to my hon. Friend later, but I should like to develop this point.
The Grigg Committee estimated that it would cost £55 million a year. Never-

theless, as the House knows, Acts of Parliament to increase past pensions have from time to time been introduced to relieve hardship or special need. That was done in 1944, 1947, 1952, 1954 and 1956. That does not, of course, affect the principle that changes in rates of pay and pensions do not automatically apply to those already retired.

Sir E. Errington: Can my right hon. Friend say what amount it would cost to bring widows' pensions up to the proposed future amount?

Mr. Sandys: I am sorry that I cannot. It is not very easy to make that calculation, as I shall explain in a moment.

Sir J. Smyth: Did I understand my right hon. Friend to say that disability pensions have no effect on recruiting? Perhaps I misunderstood him. I understood my right hon. Friend to say that disability pensions had no effect on recruiting. I could not agree with that.

Mr. Sandys: I did not mean to suggest that for one moment. Incidentally, I draw a disability pension myself. Having said that, I should like to make clear that I realise that there are very sad cases of Service widows living on very slender means. The Government are not insensible to their difficulties.
There can be no question—I say this really in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot—of applying the Grigg Committee's formula to these widows. Many of them might actually lose money if the rate of pension were determined by reference to their late husbands' pensions. Their late husbands might have retired a long time ago, on an altogether lower code. If it should be decided to help these widows, an entirely different arrangement would be needed.
For the reasons given by the Grigg Committee, this raises very serious difficulties. However, I repeat that the Government have every sympathy with these widows, and I will add that we are going into the whole matter at present to see whether there are any valid grounds on which we could reasonably justify making a differentiation in favour of this category of pensioner. That is, I am afraid, as much as I can say tonight. What I have said was concerted with my colleagues concerned.
Some hon. Members have drawn attention to the Grigg Committee's criticism of the state of some of the Army's equipment. I certainly do not take exception to what it said. During recent years, each service has been required to keep down its expenditure, and, in the Army, this has been particularly difficult because so much Army expenditure, on pay, movements, food and accommodation, is irreducible. The result has been that the economies have tended to fall upon the provision of new equipment. These shortcomings, which should not be exaggerated, have been high-lighted by comparisons between the equipment of the British Rhine Army and the equipment of the German and American Armies serving alongside.
The German Army, of course, is a brand new Army and it has brand new equipment. The American Army can afford, better than we can, to scrap equipment which still has a useful life. However, long before we saw the Committee's Report we had already decided to make a special effort to speed up the provision of new equipment for the Army, and that pressure will be kept up. I should like to say more, but I understand that I have to sit down a little before the usual time.
I can assure the House that, in one way or the other, we are determined to see that our new all-Regular Army, when it comes into being in four years' time, shall have the best and most up-to-date equipment which the country can provide. We should not underestimate the extent to which action is already going on. We are already in the process of introducing into the Army a complete new family of weapons and equipment, including personal weapons, guns of all kinds, tactical atomic weapons, signal equipment, tanks, armoured cars, armoured personnel carriers, and a wide range of "soft" vehicles.
Hon. Members have alluded to the women's services and I should like to say that we attach the very highest importance to their role. It was a misunderstanding to suggest that the Army did not attach importance to its women's Service. The suggestion that the Army could not reduce its manpower requirement if it had more women was, I think, a little misleading. The truth is that the Army has already taken into account lie full planned strength of its women's

Service, the W.R.A.C., in arriving at its figure of what it needs for the male element in the Army. If the Grigg Committee had asked a different question and said. "If you had no women, would you need more men?", the answer certainly would have been, "Yes."
Service pay, pensions and accommodation and recreational facilities must, as far as possible, be made as good as those available in civilian life, and this is what we are doing. If conditions in the Services are not as good as they should be, this will obviously deter people from joining the Navy, the Army and the Air Force. But let us not imagine that money and accommodation are everything.
A man does not join the Army just for the joy of living in good barracks. He joins it because he is attracted by the special kind of life that it offers—a life of comradeship, travel and adventure, a good career in a responsible profession and wide opportunities for the exercise of skill, initiative and leadership. Above all, he is attracted by the knowledge that he will be doing an important job for the protection of his country and for the peace of the world.
These men, we all agree on both sides of the House, deserve the best conditions that we can reasonably give them and the Government's prompt acceptance of the main recommendations of the Grigg Committee provides further evidence that we intend to give them a fair deal.

Mr. Mellish: On a point of order. Mr. Speaker. I am not raising this in a facetious manner. This debate was to be replied to by the Minister of Defence. The right hon. Gentleman walked out of the Chamber at about half-past five this evening and did not come back until ten minutes to nine. Is this not surely most disrespectful to the House? How can he reply to a debate that he has not heard? Can you, Sir, at least express the opinion that when Ministers are due to reply to debates they should at least stay here to listen to them?

Mr. Speaker: That is not a point for me at all. It is not a point of order of any kind.

Mr. Sandys: Anybody who listened to my reply will, I think, agree that I answered a very large number of points.

Mr. Mellish: The right hon. Gentleman was not here.

Mr. Paget: There is one point which the right hon. Gentleman has not found it necessary to answer. Ought he not to explain it? That is the discourtesy to the House to which my hon. Friend has just referred. Certainly, in the thirteen years in which I have been in this House, I have never known a Minister depart from the debate which he was proposing to answer and then come back without one word either of explanation or of apology.

Mr. Mellish: Without any apology to the House. It is absolutely disgraceful.

Mr. Speaker: Order. These are not points for me. The House must deal with the matter in some other way.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House takes note of the Report of the Advisory Committee on Recruiting (Command Paper No. 545) and the Government's Comments thereupon (Command Paper No. 570).

BUILDING (SCOTLAND) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question put (pursuant to Standing Order No. 60 (Public Bills relating exclusively to Scotland)), That the Bill be committed to the Scottish Standing Committee.—[Mr. Maclay.]

Question agreed to.

Bill (deemed to have been read a Second time) committed to the Scottish Standing Committee.

BUILDING (SCOTLAND) [MONEY]

Considered in Committee under Standing Order No. 84 (Money Committees).—[Queen's Recommendation signified.]

[Sir CHARLES MACANDREW in the Chair]

Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to make as respects Scotland new provision for safety, health and other matters in respect of the construction of buildings and for safety in respect of the conduct of building operations; for these purposes to establish buildings authorities for burghs and landward areas of counties and to amend the law relating to dean of guild

courts; and to amend the powers of local authorities in relation to buildings which are below prescribed standards or dangerous, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of—

(a) any expenses incurred by the Secretary of State in consequence of the said Act of the present Session; and
(b) any increase attributable to that Act in sums payable out of moneys provided by Parliament under any other enactment.—[Mr. Maclay.]

Resolution to be reported.

Report to be received Tomorrow.

TEACHERS, SCOTLAND (TRAINING AUTHORITIES)

9.59 p.m.

Mr. G. M. Thomson: I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Teachers' (Training Authorities) (Scotland) Regulations, 1958 (S.I. 1958, No. 1634), dated 30th September, 1958, a copy of which was laid before this House on 21st October, in the last Session of Parliament, be annulled.
The Opposition has no need to apologise for placing this Prayer upon the Order Paper. We do so in order that the House may have an opportunity to discuss this important question of the reorganisation of the system of teacher training colleges in Scotland. The last time that it came before the House was in 1931. Thus, this is the first time in a generation that we have had an opportunity to consider this important aspect of educational policy. Indeed, it is a rather unfortunate feature of our legislative machinery that such an important change as this should have to be done by Regulations, when the opportunity to debate and consider them in detail is necessarily limited.
We have just concluded an important debate on recruitment to the defence forces. Important though that subject is, it is quite likely that in comparison with the Soviet Union, for example, our capacity to recruit teachers, both on a good scale and of good quality, is equally vital. It is for that reason that we have tabled this Motion tonight. If we are to have teachers on the scale and of the quality that we all desire, nobody plays a more important part in that function than the staffs of training colleges.
I do not wish to take up too much time, and I turn at once to four specific


points in the Regulations on which I should like to have the views of the Minister. First, I am concerned that in the alterations in the governing bodies of the training colleges made in the Regulations, the central institutions—the technical colleges of Scotland—are no longer to have a place. Under the old arrangements, they occupied throughout Scotland nine places in the provincial committees. This representation has been wiped out altogether and this omission has been lost in argument over what are in some ways, less important matters.
Today, it is generally agreed that one of the most important categories of teachers is the teacher of technical subjects, either in schools or in the technical or trades colleges. It is tremendously important that these people in particular should have a thoroughly good professional training. Therefore, those concerned with the central institutions should themselves play a full part in administering the new colleges of education.
I made representations about this during our debate last July and I had hoped that although my representations were, perhaps, of a somewhat unconstitutional character, coming across the Floor of the House, they might have had consideration by the Government. This has not proved to be so. I can only repeat what I said in July, that I hope the Secretary of State, in making the appointments that lie within his discretion, will ensure that there is adequate representation for the central institutions on the new governing bodies. I press the Minister, in replying tonight, to give us a definite assurance on that score.
The second matter I want to raise is, perhaps, less important against the whole scale of the Regulations, but attention should be paid to it. I notice that in Regulation 33 provision is made in connection with the demonstration schools attached to the colleges of education that these demonstration schools shall be able to charge fees if they wish. This is a most unfortunate provision at this time in new Regulations which may last for another generation. I hoped that we were moving away from imposing charges of this kind on education. I would have thought that whatever the arguments for charging fees in ordinary schools, in the case of demonstration schools the argument was wholly the other way.
I take it that the function of these important schools is to provide both the students and the research workers and lecturers at the colleges with practical experience in classroom techniques. It is important, therefore, that the pupils in these demonstration schools should be representative pupils and should come from all sections of the community. The imposition of fees merely ensures that those who practise in these demonstration schools will have a body of pupils who will be different in some respects from the kind of pupils they finally face when they arrive in the classroom to do their job as qualified teachers. Therefore, I hope the Minister will give me an assurance that this matter can be looked at again.
Now I come to the two main objections that have been raised to these Regulations in the course of the representations upon them. First, there have been representations from certain teachers in Scotland that the Regulation's will permit wholesale dilution of the teaching profession. Secondly, the universities have been complaining that their advice to the Secretary of State on the Regulations has been rejected.
With regard to the teachers, the Minister is aware that I have had a number of petitions from teachers and schools in my constituency expressing fear that the Regulations mean large-scale dilution of the teaching profession. Indeed, I have had eighteen petitions, which indicate that these fears are widespread. I have no doubt that the situation in Dundee must be duplicated in other schools in other parts of the country, though the teachers there may not have given written expression of their fears to hon. Members of this House.
What is the position in regard to the fears held by a large number of teachers? As far as I can find out—and I must pay tribute to the assistance I have had in this matter in correspondence with the Minister—the fears are exaggerated, to say the least of it. Teachers fear that the provisions in the Regulations for special entry into the training colleges or for the special award of qualifications will lead to large numbers of unqualified people being allowed to become teachers in our schools.
There is already provision in existing Regulations for exceptional entry, both into the training colleges and into the


schools themselves, and there is bound to be such provision because there are aways cases of people coming from Scotland or overseas wishing to teach in our schools. We have no wish to turn such people away, so there are always exceptional cases to be dealt with.
As far as I can see, the new Regulations make no basic change in that arrangement. The only change they make seems to me to be an advantage to the teaching profession. As I understand it, at the moment the Secretary of State is the person who has to say whether a person who does not have the normal qualifications gains entry into the teaching profession, and under the new arrangements the proposed Scottish Council will exercise this function. There is a greater autonomy given to the training colleges themselves.
I think the teachers are right to be vigilant about dilution of the teaching profession, and about the problem of unqualified teachers in the schools, and I do not complain about them having made representations to me on such a considerable scale. Yet it is a little disturbing to find that there has been such widespread misunderstanding of the implications of the Regulations amongst the general body of teachers. The Regulations have been published for some time. The E. I. S. Journal has given information about them and still this misunderstanding persists. I hope that if this debate does nothing else it will give the Minister an opportunity to clarify the position so that the teachers may be reassured upon it.
On this point there are two ways in which the Minister might help the teachers to feel thoroughly reassured. The first is in regard to the rules that have to be laid down for exceptional entrants. As I have said, the Scottish Council will do this job. I hope that when it formulates the rules, as it is required to do under the Regulations, it will not simply present the teaching profession with a fait accompli. I hope that the drafts of the rules will be circulated to the various bodies interested in education so that they may have an opportunity to read and consider them and make representations upon them before they come into operation. The Minister will save himself considerable trouble subsequently if he takes that precaution.
The other point is this. What is important to the teachers themselves is the question of who is to decide on the Scottish Council what the rules are. The Scottish Council as a general body must take responsibilty for it, but the actual work of drafting the rules will be delegated to a sub-committee. There is provision for this in the Regulations. It would be helpful if the Scottish Committee delegated it to a sub-committee in which professional educationists were very strongly represented. That would help to give teachers greater reassurance on the question of unqualified people in schools.
I now come to the final point on which there have been representations. This is the question of the universities' views. I understand that the universities are still in dispute with the Secretary of State over the Regulations. Indeed, I believe that they held a meeting today and are seeking an interview with the Secretary of State for further consultations. This is very much a last-minute effort on the part of the universities. The proposals for the reorganisation of teachers' training have been before the general body of educationists in Scotland for twelve years, and it is a little odd that at this late stage the dispute should still be in operation.
One is bound to ask what the nature of the dispute is. Is it an argument between the Secretary of State and the universities over some basic issue, such as whether the training colleges are to be run as part of the State system of education or as part of the universities? The answer is that this is not the case. These are big issues, issues on which argument is possible.
There is, for instance, the question whether Scotland might have been wiser to have had a look at the system advocated by the McNair Committee for England and Wales, and now generally in operation throughout England and Wales, in which teachers' training is very much under the wing of the universities rather than under the general control of the Ministry of Education. But the Advisory Committee, whose Report is being implemented in these Regulations, came down very decisively against that form of organisation. Indeed, it points out that the vast weight of the evidence that was given to it by witnesses was against that kind of system.
The other proposition which is some-times canvassed is that at least the departments of education in the universities should themselves look after the teachers' training for the graduates coming from the universities. This proposition is not in dispute, as I understand it, because the universities themselves in their representations to the Secretary of State have said that they do not wish to see the professional training of teachers divided in this way I am sure they are right about that. So the issues in dispute here are not these fundamental issues. They are narrow issues relating to the present form of the regulations. I have no doubt that they seem very important to the people concerned, but they are over a much narrower field.
I have no wish to say anything in the course of this discussion which would make more difficult the consultations which I hope may take place between the universities and the Secretary of State. I would merely emphasise that it is most unfortunate that there should still be this kind of dispute. It is most unfortunate that the new system for the training colleges should be launched under the shadow of this kind of difference of opinion. If there are difficulties between the universities and the training colleges, that will have a harmful effect on the recruiting of teachers. Therefore, I hope that in these consultations there will be some room for compromise and that the universities will enter these consultations in that spirit.
I noticed that at the meeting of the General Council of Edinburgh University, at which strong representations were made against the present regulations, the Vice-Chancellor, Sir Edward Appleton, referred to another and even more important matter. He told the Council that this year, for the first time in the university's history, the faculty of arts had to turn away qualified applicants. He regretted that the number of acceptances should be limited, and said that it was a situation which, unfortunately, was not likely to improve over the next few years.
That is relevant to the recruitment of sufficient teachers. The universities are to make representations to the Secretary of State. I hope that it will he in order for the Secretary of State at the same time to make representations to the universities and to suggest that they might

make a special effort in the years immediately ahead to provide the maximum accommodation for students and not to turn away anybody who is qualified for entrance to a university, unless it is absolutely physically impossible to do otherwise. I can understand the difficulties in the case of science students, where laboratories and equipment are needed, but it is difficult to see why qualified arts students should be turned away from the universities. I hope that the universities, whose need for greater Government funds and help we all understand, will, in the meantime, do everything they can to meet the national need by providing educational opportunities for those who are qualified to enter the universities.
The primary argument between the universities and the Secretary of State has been about the letter of the regulations. I do not wish to deal with these detailed points. The important question which faces us in this discussion is not the letter of the regulations, but the fulfilment of the spirit of the Advisory Council's Report of 1946, especially the kind of vision of the function of colleges of education which that Report on the Training of Teachers had in its first chapters and in Chapter XXIII.
I quote merely one sentence from paragraph 217 in which the Report says:
The training institution should be a resort for teachers, and the focal point of the educational activities of the province.
Anybody reading that Report is bound to be inspired by the vision of the function which the colleges of education can fulfil. Much depends on encouragement and co-operation from everybody concerned.
Unfortunately, it is still true that for many university graduates training colleges are disincentives rather than incentives to becoming teachers. Many improvements have been made and are being made, but there is still much room for improvement. If we are to get the improvement, we need the maximum amount of co-operation between the universities and the training colleges.
To summarise the points I have put to the Minister, first, he must do everything he can to give educationists—by which I mean teachers, lecturers in training colleges and professors in the universities—as much control as possible over the entrance qualifications to colleges and schools. Secondly, he should speed up


the Training Regulations, because it is this second instalment of the regulations which is so important and which will fill in the administrative framework which we now have before us. Thirdly, he should seek the maximum co-operation between colleges and universities.
In doing that, those who are responsible for teachers' training have the advantage of a much more widespread recognition than was the case, even in

1946, of how vital it is in the national interest that we should have many more teachers, and teachers as highly qualified as possible, if we are to get the higher living standards we hope to have and, perhaps equally important, to know how to enjoy the richer and fuller leisure which technology can give us.

Mr. Malcolm MacPherson: I beg to second the Motion.

10.21 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Niall Macpherson): I am quite certain that no one, certainly no one in Scotland, would underestimate the importance of these Regulations, and I an, very much obliged to the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. G. M. Thomson) for having taken the opportunity to have them discussed in the House.
The hon. Member said that it is a very long time indeed since last we had an opportunity of considering the form of the training of teachers in Scotland, and, for that reason, if for no other, apart from the intrinsic contents of the Regulations, we on this side of the House very much welcome the opportunity of discussing them.
May I say a word or two about the origin of these Regulations? They are concerned—and I think the hon. Member for Dundee, East made this point very clearly—only with the introduction of a new system of administration and management of the teacher training colleges, or colleges of education, as they are now to be called. They are not concerned with the content of the training to be given in the colleges, nor with the standards required for admission or for certification.
The hon. Gentleman urged that we should get on with this, but this is dealt with in quite separate existing Regulations, which are themselves due for review and revision. Indeed, we are about to engage in a further series of consultations with a view to bringing these up to dare for this task, and in the course of them I hope that we shall be greatly helped by the new training authorities, and especially by the new Scottish Council which these Regulations set up.
I think that we should look for a moment into the need for these Regulations. Why do we need them? It has long been felt that the present system has two main defects. The system is over-centralised, and the balance of representation is not as good as it might be. Particularly, the teachers are under-represented. The body which in theory exercises control under the general guidance of the Secretary of State is the National Committee on the Training of Teachers. That body is composed entirely

of representatives of education authorities, represented according to their size. In practice, it meets only once a year to hear the report of its Central Executive Committee and to appoint members to that Committee.
It is the Central Executive Committee which, in reality, exercises control over the provincial committees from which its membership is largely drawn. In fact, of its members, generally about two-thirds are education authority representatives. The governing bodies of the four main colleges are the provincial committees, and the three remaining colleges are committees of management—the two Roman Catholic colleges for women in Edinburgh and Glasgow and the Dunfermline College of Physical Education for Women.
The Advisory Council on Education was given a remit in 1943 to inquire into the provision made for the training of teachers and to make recommendations. It reported in 1946. The keynote of its recommendations, so far as administration was concerned, was that—
there should be an all-round process of delegation of powers and duties.
The Council recommended the establishment of four institutes of education to take the place of the existing colleges, and to be the focal points of the educational activities of each province. Each institute was to be presided over by the principal of one of its component colleges, of which there were to be two or more for each institute.
While accepting the spirit of that recommendation, we have not been able to accept the letter, since we felt it would not work. Nor did we find any support for the recommendation in the course of our consultations. The colleges value their separate identity, and it would have been anomalous to reduce their independence in the course of a reform designed to give increased independence. Nor did the insertion of an extra tier in the structure commend itself as having any value.
That part of the Report which dealt with the kind of training to be given was accepted by the Government of the day with the exception of the recommendations as to the length of courses. Many of those recommendations have already been put into effect. The hon. Member would like to see still


more of them put into effect, but we hope that this process will be progressive. In 1955, the Scottish Education Department sent the various interested bodies a paper stating the problems in the field of administration, drawing attention to the views of the Advisory Council and to the current practice in England on these matters and, without expressing any preferences, inviting the views of the bodies. After written observations were received, all the bodies were interviewed, and the problem was discussed at considerable length. All had their own points of view, on many issues widely divergent or even directly opposed.
On certain of the main recommendations of the Advisory Council, however, there was general agreement; to those recommendations we have given effect in the Regulations. The draft Regulations, prepared in the light of the opinions expressed by the various bodies were issued in February. Many representations were received on the draft. On the whole, the draft was given a favourable reception, with one or two notable exceptions. Many bodies explicitly welcomed the main provisions of the Regulations and the general system of administration which they proposed. Others tacitly accepted the main provisions and confined their representations to points of detail affecting their own particular interests.
Very few bodies objected to the main provisions of the Regulations, or made representations which contained major criticism of the general structure. As I shall show, we were able to go a long way towards meeting the major criticisms. The representations received very careful consideration, and in many cases Ministers saw the bodies concerned. In the light of them we have made the regulations which are before the House tonight. They contain a great many changes from the draft—changes which we hope will be generally regarded as improvements. We have done our best to meet the representations, but the House will realise that since many of them were conflicting, it has been quite impossible to meet them all.
In short, far from seeking to impose his own views, the Secretary of State has done everything possible to take account of the wishes of all concerned and to establish a system which will be sound in

itself and, at the same time, as acceptable all round as can possibly be expected.
I do not think that I should part with the old system without saying a word about the present training authorities who will demit office. The National Committee for the Training of Teachers, its Central Executive Committee, and the provincial committees, and committees of management have had the administration of teacher training in their hands for many years. Their work has been unspectacular and seldom in the public eye, but the training system which has evolved under their care is second to none in its efficiency and its high standards, and it is in large measure due to them that Scottish teachers and Scottish training are held in such high regard abroad and, unlike prophets, in their own land, too.
That the training system is being altered and the present committee being replaced is no criticism of them; far from it. In fact, it is because the system has developed under their wise administration to such an extent in efficiency and responsibility that we have felt able to make the change in the direction of devolving authority to the local committees and colleges. The main features of the Regulations are these. They simplify the training system and provide for considerable devolution of responsibility. The governors of the individual colleges are given more independence. The principals are given considerable powers in their own right. The teaching staffs are given a large say in all academic and other matters falling within their responsibilities, and also they are given an important part to play in the making of new appointments.
The National Committee for the Training of Teachers and its Central Executive Committee are abolished and are replaced by a single new central body, the Scottish Council for the Training of Teachers. This new body is built up from the members of the individual governing bodies which manage the colleges. Unlike its predecessors, it will not be concerned with detailed administration and finance, but will be an advisory and co-ordinating body playing a most important part in formulating national policy on the training of teachers.
The third important feature is that the representation of serving teachers on the


various training authorities, local and national, is substantially increased, while at the same time the total number on the governing bodies have in the main been reduced. Inevitably that has meant that representation of other bodies has had to be somewhat reduced. But these features of the Regulations, and, as I say, these are the main provisions, follow closely the recommendations of the Advisory Council and have gained a large measure of agreement among the bodies whom we have consulted.
The hon. Member for Dundee, East asked about the representation of the central institutions. I can assure him that we gave most careful consideration to this question, but there are four reasons why we felt it impossible to include representation of the central institutions on the governing bodies. The first is that the central institutions are very diverse in type. Some of them deal with technology, art, commerce, domestic science, music and so forth, and it would be difficult to get one or two or even three people to deal with all these matters. The second reason is that the principals of the central institutions could hardly be in the position of governors on governing bodies on which the principals of the colleges are sitting only as assessors. Thirdly, the teachers of this group are already well represented; indeed, the head of a further education centre is one of the teachers to be elected to the governing body under the Regulations.
In making his appointments, the Secretary of State will pay heed to the necessity of giving representation to the central institutions, and we appreciate the desirability of having some representation not only from the central institutions, but also from industry and commerce in order to ensure that those who are trained as teachers of technical subjects and the like are properly represented, and that their problems are fully considered on the governing bodies of the colleges of education.
The second point raised by the hon. Member related to the question of demonstration schools. The reason why we had to include the provision about charging fees was that two of these schools already charge fees. One started as an ordinary Roman Catholic school before it became a demonstration school

and the other is situated in a well-to-do area where the residents are well able to pay fees and are accustomed to doing so. Therefore, there is no big question of principle involved; it is merely not changing the practice which already exists.

Mr. G. M. Thomson: What the Minister is saying is very unsatisfactory. He is carrying out a major reorganisation or the teacher training system for the first time in twenty-five years. He is changing all sorts of things and is now advancing as an argument for not changing this that it exists and must go on existing. Is that the argument for not reconsidering this matter of principle?

Mr. Macpherson: The purpose of these Regulations is to give more power to the governing bodies themselves, and if we were not to make this provision we should be taking away a power they already have. I know how the hon. Gentleman regards this matter, but I think the right thing to do under the circumstances is to leave the governing bodies with the option, if they think fit, to charge fees.
The hon. Member for Dundee, East dealt with the charge that one of the intentions of the Secretary of State in introducing the Regulations is to pave the way for wholesale dilution. I should say a word or two about this because, as the hon. Member said, there has been very widespread misunderstanding on the matter and I should like to clear up the misunderstanding once and for all. The existing Training Regulations, which are separate and distinct from the Training Authorities Regulations that we are discussing tonight, naturally lay down conditions for the award of teachers' certificates in Scottish terms.
Clearly there must be provision for exceptional cases where the persons concerned, often from England, Ireland or from more distant parts, rest their claims on non-Scottish qualifications and experience obtained furth of Scotland. This is what is meant by exceptional admission and exceptional awards. Provision for them is written into the existing Training Regulations and they have operated for many years. Under the existing arrangements for cases of exceptional admission the colleges make


recommendations to the Secretary of State, and for cases of exceptional recognition as teachers the governing bodies of the colleges make recommendations to the Secretary of State.
It seemed to us that these arrangements have three unsatisfactory features. In the first place, they deprive the training authorities of the right to make these decisions for themselves, which does nothing to enhance their status. In the second place, in considering the applications and making recommendations, each of the four main colleges work independently and without knowledge of all the precedents. It is only the control which has been exercised by the Secretary of State that has avoided inconsistent decisions between one college and another.
In the third case the cases have all been considered twice, first by the training authority concerned and then by the Secretary of State's officers. This duplication of effort has been serious, as the applications are numerous and some of these involve quite heavy work, for example, when Poles base their applications on qualifications obtained before the war in Poland.
We have sought to remedy these defects in the Regulations, which lay upon the Scottish Council the task of formulating principles and rules which are to govern decisions on individual applications. The principles relating to exceptional admission are to be applied in particular cases by the colleges, and the principles and rules relating to applications for the exceptional award of a teacher's certificate are to be applied by a special committee of the Scottish Council.
The hon. Member for Dundee, East asked what would be the composition of that special committee. If he turns to paragraph 17 (2) of the Regulations, he will see that that function is remitted to a standing committee of the Scottish Council which will carry out the function in Regulation 42 by which the Council is to formulate principles.
I come now to a particular point of criticism. Under Regulation 42, it is in accordance with these principles and rules that an application for the exceptional award of a teacher's certificate must be decided. Where an applicant represents

that because of qualifications obtained furth of Scotland, or of practical, experience of teaching, or for any other reasons
a particular qualification should be granted to him, those principles and such of the rules as may be relevant must apply. It has been suggested that this means that people can be admitted to the profession and to the status of certificated teacher not because they have proper qualifications but solely because they have done some teaching, or, indeed, for any other reason. I understand that the allegation has been carried even further. It has been suggested that it is indeed the intention of the Scottish Education Department to dilute the profession.
This is a complete misconception. These Regulations which we are discussing tonight do not deal with educational or teaching standards. They deal with matters of administration and administrative procedure. The Regulations which I have quoted relate to the considerations which an applicant is entitled to bring forward in support of his claim. When the applicant has made his claim, it will then be for the Scottish Council, in the light of the principles and rules which the Council has itself laid down and published—it must publish them—to determine whether a candidate's application should be granted or not.
I am quite certain that an independent and responsible body such as the Scottish Council, or, indeed, any training authority composed of representatives of education authorities, the universities, the teaching profession and the Churches, will fulfil its duty in these matters with the utmost regard for what is right in the interests of the profession and the interests of Scottish education. I can certainly state quite categorically that we have not inserted this provision in the Regulations in order to dilute the profession. Indeed, if the Secretary of State had had that aim in view he would hardly have sought to achieve it by delegating authority in these very matters from himself to the Scottish Council; or, if he did so, he would have been careful to retain full control over the appointment of members of the Council. In fact, my right hon. Friend is to appoint only three out of twenty-five members.
The hon. Gentleman suggested that it would be well if the Scottish Council circulated its rules before it published them. That, of course, will be a matter


for the Scottish Council, but I feel certain that the Scottish Council will take due note of what he said. For our part, we shall be glad to draw his suggestion to the attention of the Council. It will be a matter for the Council itself and, of course, any representations on the matter will be to the Scottish Council and not to the Secretary of State.
The hon. Gentleman raised a very important point about the attitude of the Scottish universities. Hon. Members will have had an opportunity of reading the universities' memorandum on the draft which I placed in the Library. I see from the Press that this memorandum—which, I repeat, was on the draft and not or the final Regulations—has appeared in the Press since. I will add that the universities have been careful to ask for the agreement of my right hon. Friend before publishing it.
While welcoming many of the main provisions as improvements in the existing system, the universities felt that the proposed training system had been conceived too much on the lines of local authority administration. In order to create the liberal atmosphere in the colleges which they consider essential, and which, as the hon. Gentleman rightly pointed out, the Advisory Council recommended in its Report, the universities suggested that the system ought to be modelled more closely on the universities themselves. This subject of a liberal atmosphere and its relation to the system of administration in the colleges is a very large one, and I can only touch on it in passing.
It seems to me that there is no reason why the atmosphere of a college of education should not be an essentially liberal one. Although the staff serve under the general control of a body of governors on which they are not represented, they have just as much freedom within their departments as university lecturers and, indeed, they often are university lecturers. The heads of training colleges and many of the staff are themselves distinguished university graduates, some of whom have lectured in the past and others of whom are at present lecturing in the universities as well as in the colleges.
When Lord Strathclyde and I met the principals of the four Scottish universities we understood that the three points to which they attached the greatest im-

portance were these. First, they considered that the staff of the colleges of education should have been given a more assured say in academic matters, and that the provisions dealing with the boards of studies were not strong enough. We have rectified that, as hon. Gentlemen will see if they refer to Regulation 27. Secondly, they wanted the staffs of the colleges of education to have some place in the making of staff appointments. This, too, we have provided for in the final regulations, although I recognise that we have not gone quite so far as the universities would have liked.
Thirdly, they wanted to appoint whom they thought fit, and not merely members of the senatus, other than those with teaching responsibilities in the colleges, to the governing bodies. They said that the principals of the colleges of education and some members of their staffs should themselves be on the governing bodies, both in their own right and to make it easier for the professors of education and psychology to be appointed members.
While we have, as I say, met the universities fully in regard to the first two points, and on some others which I have not time to mention, we have not been able to meet this third point. I need scarcely say that we are entirely at one with the universities in feeling that both the principals and the professors have a most important contribution to make to the deliberations of the governing bodies. But it was our view that to make the principals and one or two members of the staffs and the two professors no more than a minority among the voting members of the governing bodies would be more likely to detract from, than to enhance, their position. In this matter we feel that it is right that the principals and the professors should be treated alike.
As a result of the arrangements between the colleges and the universities for certain courses to be taken concurrently, the same students may be attending both college and university at the same time. This applies particularly to the education and psychology departments of the colleges and of the universities. This being so, it seemed to us inappropriate that if the principals were to be excluded from the governing bodies, the professors should be included, with the result that they would be voting as governors on the proposals of the principals, their professional colleagues.
As I have already said, we fully recognise that the professors of education and of psychology have a valuable part to play in training college affairs, but we consider that they can make their contribution most effectively in the capacity of expert advisers rather than as ordinary members of the governing bodies, where university interests are already represented by three members. This is precisely what we have tried to secure by providing that one of them shall be an assessor to each governing body where, like the principals themselves, they will be advisers with freedom to speak on all points. In addition, we have provided that they may be full members of the Central Scottish Council which is itself an advisory and co-ordinating body with most important responsibilities.
I hope it will be clear to the House that, far from dismissing the universities representations lightly, as I have seen suggested, we have given the most careful thought to them and have gone a long way to meet them. I have only one other point to make in connection with the universities—

Mr. Malcolm MacPherson: Would the hon. Gentleman explain the reason for restricting the universities' possibilities of appointment to the senatus? That I would take to be in most universities about 20 per cent. of the teaching staff. Why should a university not be free to appoint a member of the teaching staff who is not a member of the senatus?

Mr. Macpherson: The reason for that is that one of the purposes of the Regulations is to enhance the prestige and position of the colleges of education and the training authorities as a whole. We felt that it would be in keeping with that prestige that members of the senatus should be appointed to the governing bodies.
The universities asked for a considerable increase in their representation on the governing bodies. They asked for one-third of the seats. We have not been able to meet that request. There has been very general acceptance of the view that teachers should be given increased representation, and the universities them-

selves shared that view. It will be clear that to do this, as we have done, and, at the same time, to give the universities one-third of the seats would have made it impossible to provide an adequate number of places for the other legitimate interests which must me covered.
As it is, the universities will have three full members and an assessor on each of the main governing bodies, compared with four members of the existing bodies, which are, in most cases, larger than their successors. In addition, they will have one full member on the boards of each of the Roman Catholic colleges and the College of Physical Education, where previously they had none. They will also have four full members on the Scottish Council, where they had none previously.
It will be clear to the House, from the details I have given, that far from resulting in a diminution of the part that the universities play in teacher training, as measured by their representation on the various training authorities, the Regulations have considerably increased it. Moreover, they make special provision, for the first time, for co-operation between the colleges and the universities in matters of common interest between the two.
In the circumstances, I feel that we have gone a long way to meet the major criticisms. My right hon. Friend will be happy to meet the universities or any other of the constituent bodies to consider ways of improving the arrangements for the training colleges. We are here considering the Regulations, which have been subjected to the most close scrutiny. There have been consultations, interviews draft Regulations, representations and, again, interviews. Now, at last, we come to the Regulations. In view of the care that has been taken and the fact that the Regulations have been inspired by the Advisory Council's Report, and the fact that they have had a very large measure of general agreement all round, I hope that they will commend themselves to the House.

Mr. G. M. Thomson: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

United Nations (South Africa)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Oakshott.]

10.53 p.m.

Mr. Charles Royle: It is a long way from Scotland to South Africa or even to New York and the United Nations, but I want for a short time to draw the attention of the House to something which I regard as of desperate importance. Since I requested that I might introduce this subject on the Adjournment, Questions have been asked about the subject on 17th November. The replies then given by the Foreign Secretary only reinforced my determination to raise the question tonight. It can be dealt with, even in the course of an Adjournment debate, at a little greater length than is possible by way of question and answer. I hope it may be possible to express oneself—and, perhaps, others will express themselves—on this important matter.
I want to discuss the resolution, debated in the Political Committee of the General Assembly of the United Nations, which was sponsored by 33 nations and which, in short, called on all members of the United Nations to bring their policies into conformity with the Charter obligation to promote human rights. It expressed regret and concern that the South African Government has not yet responded to the Committee's appeals to reconsider governmental policies which impair the right of all racial groups to enjoy the same rights and fundamental freedoms. That resolution was carried by 68 votes to five, with four abstentions. To our utter shame, the United Kingdom was one of the five, and I want to use this occasion to dissociate at least this hon. Member and, I am certain, many others from that vote.
I am sick to feel that the United Kingdom Government have not sufficient guts—excuse the term, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, but. I can think of no other which really means what I want to say—to declare that they regret the policy of Apartheid. The resolution did not "condemn" that policy but merely "regretted" it. In fact, the Government voted against a resolution which regretted the policy of Apartheid in South Africa.
This decision has both a foreign affairs content and a Dominion and Commonwealth one. We need to show in no uncertain manner how we stand in these matters to the rest of the world. What possible criticisms can we offer to Communist nations on questions of human rights when we are so weak-kneed ourselves?
In the Commonwealth there is a majority of coloured people, and very recently in this country we have seen racial disturbances like those in Notting Hill. What are the coloured people of this Commonwealth thinking of the decision of the Mother Country's Government? It is not without significance that four out of the five countries which voted against this resolution were nations with colonial territories themselves. I suggest that the distress of the people of the Commonwealth, particularly the coloured peoples, must be increasing day by day, particularly as a result of that decision on this vote.
The Foreign Secretary told the House only last Monday that our representative at the United Nations made it clear that we accept the principles in the first operative paragraph of the resolution. This paragraph read:
The General Assembly … declares again that in a multi-racial society harmony and respect for human rights and freedoms and the peaceful development of a united community are best assured when patterns of legislation and practice are directed towards ensuring equality before the law of all persons regardless of race, creed or colour, and when economic, social, cultural and political participation of all racial groups is on a basis of equality.
That is fine, but I would not for one moment have thought it possible that acceptance of that wonderful principle could be accompanied by a vote for the rejection of the resolution on what was nothing but a legal quibble. Lip-service to such a principle, I suggest, is sheer hypocrisy when a vote against it is cast.
On all previous resolutions of this kind, and there have been several, the United Kingdom Government have abstained. On this occasion we sink lower; we now vote against it, and in so doing we hide behind paragraph (7) of Article 2 of the Charter, which says:
Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorise the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any State.


The Times suggested that the operative words were "intervene" and "essentially". What exactly does "intervene" mean? Does it mean that we are intervening in the affairs of South Africa because we are prepared to express ourselves in the United Nations by a vote regretting the methods which she has set up? Is Apartheid essentially within the jurisdiction of any State? This is a great human problem. It is not a question for a legal quibble.
I saw the other day—I wonder whether it is the answer—that it has been confirmed that Britain's investments in the Union are £864 million. Is that the answer? Are we doubtful about expressing our regret about the policy which is carried out in South Africa because of that investment programme? It is a vast programme; but I am ashamed if that is the reason why we are failing in the United Nations to express our regret about what is going on.
The Foreign Secretary spoke the other day of our consistency in this matter. If we are consistently bad, for goodness' sake let us change what he called the annual legal argument on these matters. South Africa should know in no uncertain terms exactly what the masses of the people in the United Kingdom think about the question. Only a future vote, I suggest, in a further meeting of the United Nations and in favour of a resolution of this character can prove that this country will not tolerate the application of Apartheid beliefs and practice anywhere.
I conclude, because of the lateness of the hour, by registering my own personal disgust that there is cast in our name a vote which is aimed at preventing a resolution which only mildly protests against the shocking and cruel things which are being perpetrated in South Africa. I welcome the opportunity of saying these things and expressing myself about them even in these circumstances. I am grateful that the Under-Secretary for Commonwealth Relations has come here at this late hour to answer what I have had to say. I want him to appreciate that what I have said comes from the very depth of my soul in this great human problem, and I hope that ere long this country will be saying in no uncertain terms exactly what it feels about the things that are going on.

11.5 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations (Mr. C. J. M. Alport): Although the hon. Member for Salford, West (Mr. Royle) has introduced this subject in a somewhat intemperate manner, I welcome the opportunity of making clear what was the meaning of the United Kingdom's vote at the United Nations General Assembly on the subject of South Africa's racial policies. The hon. Member read the relevant section of Article 2 (7) of the United Nations Charter, and I should like to repeat it. That Article says:
Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorise the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any State.
It has been suggested that the question of South Africa's racial policies is not a matter essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of the Union of South Africa in view of the existence of two other Articles in the Charter, Articles 55 and 56. Under those Articles, members of the United Nations in effect undertake to promote universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion. At the same time, those Articles are an integral part of the Charter, and Article 2 (7) states categorically that nothing contained in the Charter shall authorise the United Nations to intervene in the internal affairs of a member country. Therefore, neither those Articles nor for similar reasons, Articles 10, 13, or 14 could be properly invoked to provide justification for intervention by the United Nations General Assembly over the question of South Africa's racial policies.
Quite independent of such Articles in the United Nations Charter, there are no precise treaty obligations which could be invoked to support the argument that South Africa's racial policies are a breach of specific international obligations which limit her freedom of action in her internal policies. The International Declaration on Human Rights, as the hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway) knows, has sometimes been invoked in this connection. That Declaration is a statement of principles to which Governments should aspire and is not and is not intended to be a legally binding instrument.
When it was drawn up, the intention was to translate its provisions into precise


legal obligations by subsequent covenants. This was essential since, as the House will know, nothing is particularised in the Universal Declaration itself. The human rights themselves are undefined and their exact content is the subject of widely divergent views among the member States of the United Nations. The General Assembly has made prolonged attempts to agree the final texts of covenants on human rights, but, because of the divergence of views, it has so far been unsuccessful, with the exception of one in 1952 concerning the political rights of women, and another in 1956 concerning slavery. But, apart from those Conventions, there are at present no specific United Nations instruments in the field of human rights to which any member Government could adhere.

Mr. A. Fenner Brockway: The Minister was saying that there are no treaties with the South African Government dealing with these matters. In the first place, did not the Constitution of South Africa, which set up South Africa as a sovereign State, make quite clear declarations on these matters? Britain entered into that treaty. Secondly, when Indian indentured labour went to South Africa, did no the British Government declare that the condition must be the absolute equality of the Indian population with the European population?

Mr. Alport: The hon. Member is referring to two separate things, quite distinct from the point that I made earlier on. I was referring to the tendency to invoke the Declaration of Human Rights in relation to this point, and the point I was making—and which I thought I made quite clearly—was that apart from the two Conventions of 1952 and 1956, to which I referred, in my own words, "there are at present no specific United Nations instruments in the field of human rights to which any member Government could adhere." I know that the hon. Member was referring to other—

Mr. Brockway: No, I was referring to the hon. Member's earlier point about treaties.

Mr. Alport: The hon. Member was referrng to two other agreements, but I want to make it clear that those are not agreements in the normal sense of

bringing in international obligations and. therefore, do not come within the specific sphere that we are discussing this evening.
I go on to mention another misunderstanding which seems to arise—and which I think is passing through the minds of hon. Members opposite—in regard to general international concern. It is essential to differentiate between these two conceptions. In a sense, practically everything a country does, even within its own borders, is liable to be of concern to others outside. If, however, one were to argue that, should a country or group of countries declare that the actions of a particular country are a matter of concern to them, this automatically gave them the legal right to intervene, on that basis practically nothing would be within the Government of that country's domestic jurisdiction. Surely, however, there can be no question but that a country is free, for example, to pursue economic and financial policies as it pleases, subject only to any specific treaty obligations which may have been undertaken.
It is pretty clear that any other interpretation would place an intolerable strain on the United Nations. As the United Kingdom representative pointed out in the Special Political Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, there are many situations in which the domestic policies of a member State are, for one reason or another, in conflict with the views of other member States.
I have no doubt that in the minds of hon. Members opposite there are examples which are perfectly clear to them when this circumstance arises, but the fact remains that although member States may strongly disapprove of certain domestic policies of some other members, these issues have not been raised in the United Nations General Assembly, as international disputes, for the simple reason that to do so in all those circumstances would impose an intolerable strain on the Organisation and, in the long run, make its operation as a body for the conciliation of international disputes almost unworkable. Consequently, there is general recognition of the principle to which I have referred in Article 2 (7) which prevents the General Assembly from intervening in the domestic affairs of any particular member State.
It has been argued that discussion in the General Assembly, and the passing of a resolution calling upon the Government of the Union of South Africa to reconsider its policies does not constitute intervention in the sense in which it is used in Article 2 (7). There is, or so it seems to the Government of the United Kingdom, a very important distinction between a discussion in a general way of, for instance, the principles embodied in the United Nations Charter—a discussion which leads eventually to general recommendations applying to all the members of the United Nations—and a discussion on the other hand which is intended to lead, and does lead, to the adoption of a resolution directed against the internal policies of a particular member State.
In the latter event, such discussions and resolutions are specifically and admittedly intended to produce reactions and influence events in the territory concerned, irrespective of the views or wishes of the Government of that territory. Their whole object obviously and clearly amounts to intervention, and the speech of the hon. Member for Salford, West was clearly to dissociate himself from policies with which he does not agree. One can understand that; he is perfectly entitled to do that, but by so doing he would bring pressure to bear upon the Government of the Union of South Africa to change its policy in relation to racial resolutions.
The truth of the matter is that, as I have already said, the object of a resolution of this sort which would apply to the particular policies of a particular country can only, in the light of Article 2 (7), be an intention to intervene in the domestic policies of the country concerned.
It is in these circumstances that Her Majesty's Government have consistently taken the view that the raising of the question of South Africa's racial policies in the General Assembly of the United Nations is a direct contravention of Article 2 (7), and the result of that has been that the United Kingdom delegation has consistently opposed any such action. The vote of the United Kingdom delegation on the resolution which concerned South Africa's internal policies was solely a vote on this question of

the competence of the United Nations General Assembly. It was a vote, as we in Her Majesty's Government believe, in defence of the United Nations Charter; in defence of an essential principle of that Charter.
The meaning of Article 2 (7), in our view, is quite clear. It is primarily there because it was regarded by those who originally drew up the Charter as an essential feature of that Charter without the existence of which it is probable that many of those who first supported it, and have subsequently done so, would not have been prepared to do so; they would not have been prepared to envisage circumstances in which their own domestic policies could be interfered with as a result of reforms taken under the Charter.
To interpret this other than literally would mean a tacit agreement for revision of the Charter and Her Majesty's Government is, frankly, not prepared to accept such a proposition. It is not correct, as the hon. Member for Salford West said in his opening remarks, to suggest that the United Kingdom's action implied an expression of opinion on South Africa's racial policies.
It is not the policy of Her Majesty's Government to express views on the internal policies of other Commonwealth countries. The United Kingdom representative in the Special Political Committee expressly stated that in opposing the resolution concerning South Africa's racial policies Her Majesty's Government were not expressing any opinion on those policies. The hon. Gentleman alleged that Her Majesty's Government were actuated in this matter by material interests connected with investments, or something like that, in South Africa. That is the sort of far-fetched allegation to which we have become accustomed in these rather desperate days for the Opposition. It does not help the case which the hon. Gentleman is sincerely advancing, nor the work of the United Nations and those concerned with it, to to make that sort of allegation.

Mr. Brockway: Is it denied?

Mr. Alport: Certainly, categorically and completely.
It would be incorrect to suggest that voting against the United Nations resolution as a whole, both in Committee and


in Plenary, implies that the Government have any reservations regarding the admirable principles set out in the United Nations Charter. To dispel all misunderstanding on this point it was specifically dealt with in the Political Committee by the United Kingdom representative.
The Government are fully aware of the fact that under Article 56 of the Charter they have pledged themselves to take joint and separate action and to cooperate with the U.N.O. for the achievement of the purposes set out in Article 55 which, in section (c), refers to human rights and fundamental freedoms. The Government are fulfilling this pledge in all the territories for which they hold responsibility, and we will continue to do so. We interpret Article 56 of the Charter as a pledge to maintain our own standards and to co-operate by mutual agreement with other member States in forwarding the principles embodied in Article 55. But we do not regard it, and

in fact are prevented from doing so by Article 2 (7), as an undertaking to intervene in the internal policies of other Governments.
Because the United Nations resolution was specifically concerned with the internal policy of a member State, the United Kingdom delegation could not vote in favour of the earlier operative paragraphs of the resolution. But we made clear that we wholeheartedly endorsed the principles stated in the first operative paragraph of the resolution, and this was made plain by our spokesman in the Special Political Committee. I submit to the House—

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at twenty-three minutes past Eleven o'clock.